woman holding a baby, unrecorded Canadian Inuit artist

Exhibition Label:
"Climate Change at the Poles," Jan-2009, Kate Meyer, Jennifer Talbott, and Angela Watts
In the mid-twentieth century, the Canadian government assumed responsibility for the welfare of the Inuit living in the Canadian Arctic, and subsequently relocated most Inuit families into small villages and towns. This created a need for the Inuit to live in a cash economy. In 1949, largely due to the influence of a young artist and collector named James Houston (1921-2005) who had visited the Arctic, the Canadian Guild of Crafts and the Hudson’s Bay Company began to purchase carvings for export on a large scale. Although ivory carvings had been more common in earlier decades, with the new increase in demand, artists were encouraged to use more plentiful and less expensive stone. The production of art quickly became a vital part of Inuit life, and Inuit-owned cooperatives have been formed in most communities of the Canadian Arctic.