Through the program, The Met will host two Alaska Native artists—Erin Gingrich (Iñupiaq) and Earl Atchak (Cup’ik)—for a weeklong visit in March
(New York, March 20, 2024)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today a collaborative initiative with The CIRI Foundation, a nonprofit education and heritage foundation promoting culture and heritage among Alaska Natives, particularly in the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. Through the collaboration, The Met will host two Alaska Native artists from March 24 to 30, 2024. This initiative is part of the Foundation’s Alaska Native Cultural Heritage and Artistic Sovereignty in Museums Program, which connects Alaska Native people with museums that hold items relevant to their cultural heritage. This year’s selected artists are Erin Gingrich (Iñupiaq) and Earl Atchak (Cup’ik). Bard Graduate Center (BGC) and the Gochman Family Collection will generously provide housing, and BGC will host a talk for its students highlighting the artists and their work on Friday, March 29.
During their stay, the artists will participate in various collection viewings and visits with Met staff as well as other colleagues in the city. The weeklong schedule will make it possible for the artists to build relationships at different institutions across New York as well as with a range of departments at The Met. The visit will also offer opportunities for the artists to engage with and research items in the Museum’s collection and write labels for a work of their choice. On their return to Alaska, they will host a community-engagement activity related to their New York visit.
Nadia Sethi (Alutiiq), Program Director at The CIRI Foundation, said: “The CIRI Foundation is delighted to partner with The Met through our Artistic Sovereignty in Museums initiative. The museum sovereignty program provides opportunities to increase access to Alaska Native collections that are spread throughout the world, and to ensure that the voices and perspectives of Alaska Native people are shared within museum spaces. We hope that this opportunity to collaborate with The Met will open doors to future collaborations to connect collections to our communities. We are excited that Miss Gingrich and Mr. Atchak will to be able to visit with ancestral belongings from home and share their own work with a larger audience while in New York City.”
Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art in The Met’s American Wing, said: “We are deeply honored to host Erin Gingrich and Earl Atchak. Through the generosity of The CIRI Foundation, we’re able to engage in an exciting collaboration—one that will allow us to learn and to continue growing our efforts for respectful dialogue and partnerships with Native American and Indigenous communities, cultural knowledge keepers, and individual artists as we expand our Native American art programming at The Met.”
About The CIRI Foundation
The CIRI Foundation (TCF) is an Alaska Native nonprofit education and heritage foundation. The mission of The CIRI Foundation is to promote individual self-development and economic self-sufficiency through education, and to maintain pride in culture and heritage among Alaska Natives who are original enrollees of Cook Inlet region and their descendants. The CIRI Foundation supports post-secondary scholarships and grants as well as research and other education projects. TCF seeks to perpetuate and enhance Alaska Native heritage through programs that foster appreciation and understanding by the general public.
About The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens—businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day—who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Today, The Met displays tens of thousands of objects covering 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since its founding, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.
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March 20, 2024
Contact:
Communications@metmuseum.org
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