Pratt Museum: Arts, Science, and Culture of Kachemak Bay, Alaska | Exhibits

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Special Exhibits

Marian Beck
Photo © 2007 Hal Gage

Special Exhibits and Art Collections change and grow. Handmade quilts created by volunteers depict local themes of wildflowers, marine mammals, historic buildings, and more. Showings of fine art by Kenai Peninsula artists broaden our perspectives. The Museum hosts exhibits adressing a wide variety of themes, issues, and artistic disciplines throughout a calendar year. These changing exhibits include: an Alaskan Native theme, history, science, art, and various thematic collaborations.

Learn more about our current, upcoming, or recent special exhibits.

Current

Concerning Climate Change
An Art & Science Collaboration

Scott Dickerson

Environmental change is tranforming the biological, economic and cultural fabric of our lives. Considered "Ground Zero" for global warming, Alaska is already seeing profound effects: average temperatures have risen here more than anywhere else in the country; spruce bark beetles, fueled by higher temperatures, have leveled forests; coastal villages are plunging into the sea; salmon streams are warming beyond state standards designed to protect fish; and melting sea ice and retreating glaciers are impacting landscapes and daily life.

Fifty Ways To Save Our Mother Michael Murray
Photo © 2008 Michael Armstrong

At the Pratt Museum, we believe the intersection of art and science is fertile territory to explore and respond to change. The Pratt's community-based exhibits seek to foster dialogue and self-reflection to help people challenge their own beliefs. Works in this exhibit vary in media and approach. But each asks us to look closer; to consider: What does change mean to our own lives? What role does each of us play? By helping people engage in our community's-and our world's most pressing issues. The Pratt seeks to catalyze widespread cultural change.

This community-based exhibit is part of the Pratt Museum's year-long initiative-Concerning Climate Change-that aims to help our community and visitors understand and repsond to environmental change. As part of this initiative, the exhibit was preceded by a series of workshops and events offered by the Pratt, Cook Inletkeeper, Alaska Marine Conservation Council, National Part Service, Sustainable Homer and Carmen Field.

How Big Is Your Carbon Foot Print?
Photo © 2008 Michael Armstrong

Legacy
Alan Parks
Photo © 2008 Michael Armstrong

Please visit our calendar for our schedule of special exhibit opening receptions.

Upcoming

All Alaska Juried Art Exhibition 2008
The Pratt Museum invited artists from around the state to respond to our All Alaska Juried Art Exhibition 2008 call for entries. As a thank you to the very supportive artist community we feature this exhibit in the prime visitor season between June and August for maximum exposure. Opening Reception for the Pratt's Juried Art Exhibition 2008 will be held on June 6th from 5 to 7 pm.

Recent

February 2008
Close Encounters by Jo Going
is a solo exhibit of large scale mixed media
3-dimensional painting/sculptures exploring her personal and immediate
multidimensional encounters with the wild animals of the Kachemak Bay
area.

Celebrating Quilts
The Pratt Museum’s entire quilt collection will be on exhibit through December 30, 2007. This exhibit honors the people within our community who have created a unique collection of stunning quilts. The Museum is documenting the stories of these quilts and their creators. We invite you to come view this wonderful collection and share any stories about this collection you might have.

Lena Amason
Photo © 2007 Scott Dickerson

Tradition, Inspiration, Innovation
New Work from Alutiiq Artists
This exhibit features contemporary Native influenced mixed-media art by Alvin Amason, Lena Amason, Jerry Laktonen, Perry Eaton and Rebecca Lyon. Opening reception will be held on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 from 5-7pm.

Kachemak Perspectives
Kachemak Perspectives is a dynamic exhibit of art from Homer area artists that depicts various aspects of life around Kachemak Bay. It offers visitors a sense of place through colorfully painted images, intricately decorated ceramics and relief sculpture of land and sea settings. The blend of media provides a glimpse of the depth and diversity of the art scene in Homer. Painter Marian Beck, sculptor Lynn Naden, and potter Ahna Iredale present exciting, innovative and beautifully crafted works.

Ahna Iredale
Photo © 2007 Scott Dickerson

Beauty and the Bug
April 6 to May 24, 2007
A collaboration with the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve, Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies and Cook Inlet Keeper focusing on insects and other invertebrates that are hard to see. Works addrressing this theme by artists from all disciplines will be on exhibit and programs, including poetry written in a Kachemak Bay Campus (KPC-UAA) college class, will be presented. Deadline for submissions is March 20, 2007.

Southwest Alaska: A World of Parks and Wildlife Refuges at the Crossroads
February 2007
Stunning large format photographs by Robert Glenn Ketchum and text detailing southwest Alaska and its issues around fish, oil, and mining. This traveling exhibition was created by Aperture.

For the Love of the Land
November 10 to December 30, 2006
An exhibit to honor their conservation easement donors through stories and photographs of donors and their land. Dramatic large format photographs and interviews with the donors describe the impact of the Land Trust's Kenai Peninsula-wide conservation efforts. Curated by the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust and photographers Tom Collopy and Mary Frische, Wild North Photography.

Ritz Art
October 5 - November 1, 2007
This exhibit features work from southcentral Alaska area artists who have donated their art for the Pratt Museum's Ritz fundraiser. Typically, the exhibit includes photographs, sculptures, watercolors, monoprints, fine jewelry, fibre arts, oil paintings, encaustics, ceramic pieces and much, much more!
This year the Pratt Museum celebrates 22 years of The RITZ, its annual Art & Adventure Auction fundraiser. This year's theme is Chez Ritz: An Evening in Provence and will be held on Saturday, November 3rd. Tickets are $75 and are available at the Pratt Museum and the Homer Bookstore. Online Auction closes at 5:00 p.m. on Nov. 1 at www.ritz.cmarket.com. Contact the Pratt with any questions at (907)235-8635 or chezritz@gmail.com.

Sami: Reindeer Herders of Alaska
August 18 to October 1, 2006
This exhibit features the story of how reindeer came to inhabit Alaska, and how herders came to Alaska from Scandinavia to share their skills and their knowledge of reindeer as a resource with the Native people of north western Alaska.

Creating Alaska
September-October 29, 2006
The story of statehood revealed by historic photographs, documents and artifacts surrounding the efforts that brought the territory of Alaska into the role of the forty-ninth state.

2006 Juried Art Exhibition: Going to Extremes
June 2 through August 13, 2006
The twenty-fourth Pratt Juried Art Exhibition was created from 116 entries by artists from 13 cities around the state. This exhibit invited artists to respond to our Alaskan extremes of altitude, latitude, attitude, weather, seasons, and/or perspectives.

The Proposed Pebble Mine: A Journey Through It's Watersheds
May 2006
Graduate student Emily Chenel's images of Southwest Alaska's rivers, lands, and people and interviews with people about the proposed Pebble Mine. Emily spent the summer of 2005 traveling the rivers by skiff and raft collecting these images and visiting with the people.

Body Works: A Science/Art Collaborative
April to May 2006
An exhibit and programming about the architecture and design of the human body the marvel of the human body revealed through cultural objects, photography, videography, and science. Related community wide programs will be presented by numerous health care providers and thespians in diverse venues in March, April, and May.

Jubilee 2006
April 2006
Student Art from Homer schools.

In Celebration of Owls
November to December 2005
Remarkable encounters with owls have left an indelible impression. We have become connected in time and place with those elegant, striking, and uniquely gorgeous creatures, compelling us to express our thoughts through our art forms. The process becomes an alliance between art and science, and ultimately, that of inspired discovery. This show is a strangely incongruous migration through the wilds of Alaska's community of art and owl supporters.

Aquatic Influences
An exhibition of new work by fish skin vessel maker Fran Reed of Anchorage, jeweler Susan Kingsley of Carmel, CA, and painter Asia Freeman of Homer. These artists will bring their diverse media and perspectives, inviting the viewer to reconsider and contextualize his/her own ideas of the marine world and its significance as a delicate source of life, inspiration and imagery.

Alex and Friends
This exhibit honors the contributions of Alex Combs to Alaska and his fellow artists. It Includes a body of new work by Alex, and representative new works in a wide variety of media by many of his friends from around the country, including many local Kachemak Bay artists.

Ocean Art & Nature: An Art/Science Collaboration & Jubilee! 2005 Student Art Exhibit
The Pratt Museum, Kachemak Bay Research Reserve, Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, Kachemak Bay Campus, KPC presented this Art/Science Collaboration. The exhibit was inspired by a year of workshops organized by the Kachemak Bay Research with an ocean theme focusing on plankton. Plankton provides at least half of the oxygen we breathe through processing marine carbon dioxide and is the base of the food chain. Artists responded in all media with wonderfully executed and imaginative quilts, sculpture, drawings, paintings, baskets, and ceramics. A college class writing plankton poetry bloomed into a weekly poetry group.

Always Getting Ready
Stunning black and white photographs by James Barker and a show recently reviewed in the Anchorage Daily News feturing the work of L. Saunders McNeil. Through her color images of the Siberian Yup'ik family divided by the cold war, Saunders tells a moving story in a unique and interactive format. Both artists agreed to do presentations about their work and their rich cultural experiences.

Pratt Museum Exhibits and Programs Committee

The Pratt Museum Exhibits and Programs Committee invites artists, humanists, and scientists to submit carefully created, dynamic exhibit and/or program proposals for the 2011 season. Proposals must include proposal statement, proposal form (available by email from the address below) and 10 images, either slide or digitally on disc, of the work proposed or past work. Deadline for 2011 proposals is February 10, 2009. For more information contact Holly at exhibits@prattmuseum.org or 907-235-8635 x 36. Click below for a printable version of the Proposal Form.
Proposal Form