On a recent visit, original drawings by Kenojuak Ashevak, the inspiration for some of the most recognizable Inuit prints ever made, were taken from the boxes where they have languished since the 1990s and placed on the rotating table. With the digitization, the McMichael is finally making good on a decades-old commitment to photograph all the drawings and create a publicly accessible record of the collection.
The archive in Kinngait was shipped south for safekeeping after a fire in another Nunavut community, Baker Lake, destroyed that co-op’s archive in 1977. The McMichael received the collection, featuring thousands of the original drawings from which printmakers had created the famous Cape Dorset print releases, on the understanding the museum would document it.
Eager to move ahead, the McMichael agreed to be the guinea pig for the new technology. The idea is fairly simple, turning the time-consuming photography of large collections into an assembly line. Digitization of archival collections is the key to make them publicly accessible but it’s slow and hugely expensive as one person positions and photographs one item at a time.