University of Alaska Museum Open House

Submitted by Kerynn Fisher
Phone: (907) 474-6941
12/03/02

The University of Alaska Museum’s Open House will take place Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002 from noon - 5 pm. The annual event frequently draws more than 1,000 visitors to explore the museum research labs, collections archives and other behind-the-scenes areas not always open to the public.

During the open house, a self-guided tour leads visitors through recent acquisitions to the collections and old favorites. Objects on display will include 3,000 year-old stone tools from UAF’s campus site, dinosaur bones from excavated from the banks of the Colville River, a miner’s cache (circa 1905) recently unearthed near Delta, and a cross-section of Alaska’s plants, insects, birds and mammals. Museum curators, research staff and graduate students will be on-hand answer questions, and visitors can spend as much or as little time in each of the labs as they like.

Visitors will see the museum’s collection archives, where more than 1.4 million natural and cultural history specimens are stored and preserved, and to the exhibition design and preparation labs.

Koyukon Athabascan bead artist Ginger Placeres and Inupiat doll maker Marie Morgan will give demonstrations. This is the ninth year the museum has offered these Gatherings North presentations, which bring Alaska Native artists into the museum to show visitors how they create their art.

The museum’s conference room will be reserved for younger visitors, who will work with museum volunteers and their parents to build a bug to take home and examine furs, antlers and other artifacts from the museum’s Hands-on Collection. For holiday shoppers, the Museum Store will offer a 20 percent discount on Alaska Native baskets and 10 percent off all other merchandise, including a new shipment of Alaskana books, many of them out-of-print. Walkie Charles will also be signing copies of Alaska Native Ways: What the Elders Have Taught Us. Charles is on the faculty at UAF’s Alaska Native Language Center and is one of the book’s contributing essayists. The Museum Store holiday sale runs through Dec. 24. Saturday also marks the opening of Made in Fairbanks in the Museum’s Special Exhibit Gallery. Celebrating Fairbanks’ centennial, this exhibition brings a potpourri of more than 300 creations and commercial products produced right here in Alaska’s Golden Heart. Together, the pieces represent the diversity of tradition and innovation in our community. The exhibition is sure to spark conversations among both long-time residents and visiting friends and family.

The Museum’s Open House is one of more than a dozen free events the museum hosts each year, and all Open House activities are wheelchair accessible.

"It’s a great event for families and truly one of the best things we do all year," says UA Museum Director Aldona Jonaitis.

For more information, contact Kerynn Fisher, Communications Coordinator, University of Alaska Museum, at 474-6941.