By Larry Humber
The Art Newspaper
A trove of Inuit art—some 89,000 drawings in all—was created in Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) near the southern tip of Baffin Island between 1950 and 1980, providing a way for the community in Canada’s remote Nunavut territory to generate income. But very few of those works have seen the light of day through the issuing of limited-edition prints, with the Toronto market very much in mind.
After a devastating fire destroyed a similar archive in a nearby Arctic community, the Ontario-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection moved to acquire the Cape Dorset drawings in 1990, giving them a secure home. “Inuit art was always folded into our national identity,” says Sarah Milroy, the McMichael’s chief curator, making the acquisition an obvious move.
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