NEW LONDON, CONN.- Lyman Allyn Art Museum announces the opening of Northern Lights: Inuit Prints, Drawings, & Carvings, 1950-1990. This exhibition presents the work of celebrated indigenous Canadian artists working at a time of transformative change for Inuit art making. The exhibition is on view from Feb. 8 through May 4, 2025.
More than 50 prints, drawings, and carvings, highlight the vision, artistry, resilience, and cultural perspectives of some of the most accomplished Inuit artists to rise to prominence since the 1950s, with art by Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013), Lucy Qinnuayuak (1915–1992), Pudlo Pudlat (1916–1992), and Kananginak Pootoogook (1930–2010), among others. These elders of the Inuit art world have inspired generations of artists and viewers, both in the Canadian Arctic and across the globe.
In the 1950s, many Inuit encountered cultural and practical challenges as they shifted from a self-supporting nomadic lifestyle to a more dependent and stationary one. The establishment of artist cooperatives, new techniques for artmaking, and trade networks to distribute and sell Inuit art offered new opportunities for self-sufficiency. Carving and printmaking harnessed deep wells of creativity, patience, and a strong work ethic among Inuit. Creating art was both a way to survive and a space to reflect on and visualize the wealth of deep-rooted traditions, stories, and memories of a once nomadic life.
Much of the art on view is drawn from the collection of Stonington, Connecticut resident Alice Houston, whose late husband James Houston was a life-long champion of Inuit art and a key figure in the establishment of the first Inuit-owned art cooperative at Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset) in 1959. Prints, drawings, and photographs by James and Alice Houston document their experiences in the Canadian Arctic, and a short documentary film by John Houston focuses on contemporary Inuit sculptural practices.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 with a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neoclassical building surrounded by 12 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents several changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 19,000 objects from ancient times to the present, including art from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.
