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Spring Break Up, a group exhibition of NWT Indigenous artists is to be held in Montreal

at La Guilde in the spring of 2024. This exhibition, curated by Laura Hodgins, is dedicated exclusively to highlighting Indigenous arts from the Northwest Territories, marking a historic moment in showcasing NWT art in an established arts institution.

In November 2023, Kablusiak, an Inuvialuk artist, achieved a significant milestone by winning the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s largest national art prize. This marked the first time in the award's twenty-year history that it had been granted to an artist from the Northwest Territories.

In October 2023, the GNWT and the Canada Council for the Arts formed a partnership to support the growth and sustainability of the arts and culture in the NWT. Through this partnership the Canada Council committed to providing the GNWT with a financial contribution of $750,000 over three years. This announcement between the GNWT and the Canada Council also pledged to recruit a full-time Arts Advisor located in the NWT

to provide “on the ground” assistance, and increased access to funding provided by the Canada Council for the Arts for NWT arts and culture organizations.

In September 2023, the GNWT has revised their entire arts funding structure by introducing a new series of Arts Project grants and a larger Arts Operating Fund. The total annual amount of funding has remained the same (just under $1.3 million per year) but instead the ways in which it is accessible has been revised, promising “updated and streamlined application processes.”

The “Friends of the Northwest Territories Art Gallery” board was formed to advocate, fundraise and plan for a future arts centre. They aim to earn charitable status to begin fundraising to construct what they hope will be a 29,000 square-foot building.

The Deh Gah Art Collective began in the summer of 2022 in Fort Providence and was colead by Lois Phillip and Shawna McLeod. The Deh Gah Art Collective accepted 9 applicants to for a funded opportunity to take workshops on the introduction to beading, healing and trauma work, moose hide tanning, soap making, medicine harvesting, leather purse making, vest making, dying moose hair for tufting, entrepreneurial skills, etc. The aim of this collective is to provide Fort Providence families with income, to empower women, and to teach them artistic and entrepreneurial skills.

The Amauliq Residency, the first visual arts residency in the territory, hosted its inaugural two cohorts in 2022.

In September 2022, the City of Yellowknife opened a gallery in the city inside of their new visitor information centre in the Centre Square Mall. This un-named space is the first and only public non-commercial dedicated gallery space in the territory. It is one room of 3,250 square feet. It hosts around 4 exhibitions a year. Its inaugural exhibit featured paintings by Melaw Nakehk'o.

The exhibition, Rooted and Ascending, curated by Melaw Nakehk’o, was the first group show of NWT Indigenous artists. It was held at the PWNHC and online in a virtual gallery built by AbTeC (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace.) Featured artists: Kablusiak, Casey Koyczan, Robyn McLeod, Margaret Nazon, Siku Allooloo, Riel Stevenson-Burke and Cody Fennell. Moose Hide Dome was created by Melaw Nakehk’o, Casey Koyczan, Tania Larsson and Davis Heslep in collaboration with Western Arctic Moving Pictures and Dene Nahjo.

Founded by Pat Kane, the Far North Photo Festival is a space to elevate the work of visual storytellers in Northern Canada and across the Arctic. The festival provides a platform for northerners to share northern stories in a northern setting. The Festival operated in 2019, 2020 and 2022.

Curated by Casey Koyczan, Northern Contemporary was a group show featuring works by Aidan Cartwright, Davis Heslep, Janna Graham, and Margaret Nazon held at the Arnica Artist-Run Centre, in Kamloops, BC.

Since 2011, the YKARCC has operated a variety of short term spaces, including an old church, an apartment above a Vietnamese restaurant, empty spaces in the Centre Square Mall, a cargo trailer. They continue to program exhibitions and arts programming to stimulate artists in Yellowknife.

Opened on July 1st 2000, the volunteer-run Hay River Heritage Centre operates out of the old Hudson’s Bay Company store. They house a large collection of artifacts and host cultural events.

The Gwichin Traditional Skin Clothing Project was a project created in partnership with PWNHC, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC), and the Gwichin Social and Cultural institute to repatriate the knowledge and sewing skills by replicating a 19th century coat in the CMC collection. The goal was to make 5 multipiece summer outfits, one outfit for each community (Inuvik, Aklavik, Tsiigehtic, Fort McPherson and one for the collections at PWNHC). More than 40 seamstresses worked on this project for over 2.5 years.

From its inception, the Open Sky Creative Society has held an annual summer festival in late June or early July on the flats at the confluence of the Liard and Mackenzie Rivers in Fort Simpson. This annual event hosted a series of workshops, musical performances, craft vendors and artists’ demonstrations.

The territorial division impacted many aspects of northern life. One such impact was the subsequent division of art and archival collections at the PWNHC. The collections were separated largely by geographical boundary, meaning they split the artwork made in and by artists from the new NWT and Nunavut. The Government of Nunavut’s 8,000 piece art collection was sent to the Winnipeg Art Gallery on long-term loan in 2015 where it remains today. The Government of Nunavut’s 140,000 item artifact collection was transferred to the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa in 2017, also on long-term loan.

Joanne Carolyn McNeal developed the one year “Fine arts certificate program”, the first of its kind in the territory, that began in 1995 and eventually ended in 1999.

Arts from the Arctic was a circumpolar art exhibition hosted at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. It featured artwork by artists from the NWT (Holman, Hay River, Cape Dorset), Yukon, Labrador, Sweden, Finland, Nunavut, Quebec, Russia, Greenland, and Norway. The works exhibited were them divided up and given to collections in each of the participating regions.

Opened in 1989, the Norman Wells Historical Centre portrays the history of the construction of the Canol Pipeline, geology, bush aviation, Mackenzie riverboats and Sahtu Dene culture. The Centre’s Great Bear Gallery gift shop features traditional Dene craft items and local artwork.

The annual festival was cofounded by Charlene Alexander and Sue Rose. This 10-day event continues to take place in Inuvik every July, featuring up to 80 artists and 40 performers, a 4000-piece gallery and the opportunity to work alongside local artisans during hands-on workshops. Carving, textiles, sewing, jewelry, performing arts, arctic fashion and northern culture are on display throughout the event.

Organized by Dolphus Cadieux, Six Visions is said to be the first joint exhibition of Dene and Métis art in the Northwest Territories. Held at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, it featured 8 paintings and 11 drawings by six artists (including John Farcy, Don Cardinal, and Dolphus Cadieux.)

The Northwest Territories constructed a large award-winning pavilion for Expo 86 in Vancouver. Operating for six months, the Pavilion consisted of exhibitions, a gift shop, a restaurant named “Icicles.” The gift shop sold NWT made arts and crafts including soapstone carvings, dolls, sealskin parkas, beaded mukluks, qiviut scarves, seal leather purses, sealskin mosquitos, and seal leather briefcases, totaling $1.3 million in sales. The exhibition, designed in Vancouver by Dave Jensen of D. Jensen and Associates, drew attention to the territory’s history and industries. The exhibition themes included “oil and gas, hunting, trapping fishing, mining, fur exhibit, pre-contact, and contact to 1960.” The GNWT’s goal for participating in the Expo were to increase exposure, tourism, government marketing, and corporate marketing. The pavilion created 140 short term jobs for northerners and “by the purchase of Northern arts and crafts, country foods and. northern services and building supplies, NWT Expo stimulated Northern business by injecting $3.5 million into the territorial economy, much of it in the smaller communities of the north.”

Owned and operated by Marg Baile, Arctic Art Gallery was a commercial gallery in Yellowknife. Arctic Art Gallery represented artists like Mona Thrasher, Gabe Gely, Dorothy Francis, and Graham Shaw. Baile hosted annual auctions of original paintings, carvings and limited edition prints using many forms of remote bidding options (via bidding forms, fax, e-mail or telephone.) In May 1998 Baile sold the gallery to Arctic Cooperatives Ltd.

Treeline Trappings was a store for arts and crafts operated by the Northwest Territories Native Arts and Crafts Society (under the administration of the Native Women’s Association.) They sold works made by roughly 600 Dene, Metis and Inuit artists. Treeline Trappings offered free membership for Dene, Métis, and Inuit and offered a raw materials program for artists at low prices. Treeline Trappings closed in 1993.

Art of the Dene Women was an exhibition held at the PWNHC in Yellowknife in 1983 and it was later installed at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario in 1985(now the Art Gallery of Guelph). Organized by Barbara Winter, the exhibit featured 55 objects including clothing, bags, and baskets as well as didactic panels and models explaining the techniques used to make the works on display.

The Native Women’s Association opened in 1978. In 1982, Native Women’s Association open their Dene Art Resource Centre in Yellowknife to help talented northern artists gain recognition throughout Canada. The Dene Art Resource Centre arranged commissions and exhibitions for artists. For example, they funded 7 artists to attend the first National Assembly of Native Arts in Regina in 1982. Some of the artists represented by the Dene Art Resource Centre included John Farcy, Don Cardinal, William Bonnetplume, Archie Beaulieu, Don Bourque, Dolphus Cadieux, Linda Rodgers and Frank Baptiste, Young William Cockney, and Colinda Cardinal. The Dene Art Resource Centre sold art supplies at reasonable prices, provided information on painting and drawing materials, and provided information on grants and printed professional pamphlets for artists. The Dene Art Resource Centre closed in the 1990s.

The concept for the territorial museum was approved by the Government of the Northwest Territories in 1972, as a result of concern over the loss of northern artifacts and collections and the need to provide museum services and support throughout the Northwest Territories. Building began shortly after, and as it neared completion in 1977, then Commissioner of the NWT, Stuart Hodgson suggested it be named after HRH Prince of Wales. The facility was opened on April 3rd, 1979, the Prince of Wales (now King Charles) attended the opening.

5 women from Jean Marie River had their work exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum. A version of this exhibition was later held at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife.

Acho Dene Native Crafts began operations in 1976 as a project of the Government of the Northwest Territories and still operates as a Subsidiary of the Northwest Territories Business Development and Investment Corporation. Made in the Dehcho by over 40 artists, these products are made using a blend of ancestral techniques and themes with traditional and modern materials to make birch bark baskets, jewellery, moccasins, mittens, mukluks and other souvenirs.

This exhibition showcased the work of 24 Fort Providence women at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Women’s World.

In 1972 the Northern Anthropological and Cultural Society was founded by long-time residents of Fort Smith: Darrell Clarkson, Bishop Paul Piché, Paul W. Kaeser, SR., Ernie Kuyt, Brother Henri Sarreault, Peter Verhesen and Herman Pieper who served as its first Board of Directors. In 1974 the collection was placed in the newly constructed Northern Life Museum. Still in operation, the Museum now holds over 17,000 artifacts.

Northern Images opened in Yellowknife 1973. It was the first of 8 commercial art galleries owned by Winnipeg based Arctic Co-operatives Limited. After nearly 50 years of selling Inuit and Dene art, Northern Images closed its Yellowknife storefront in 2021 though it continues to operate online.

As a part of the GNWT’s program to promote the economic development potential of northern crafts and garments, the Inuvik Arts and Crafts Centre established. The building was sold by the GNWT to the Canadian Arctic Cooperative Federation Ltd in 1975. The annual sales of arts and crafts approached $500,000 in 1975.

Invited by Commissioner Stuart Hodgson, a board was formed to propose the establishment of an art gallery in the NWT. On July 29th, 1968 a formal motion was passed at the 37th legislative session calling for the establishment of a representative collection of northern artwork as a part of the future capital complex. Ideas for an artist’s residency, the establishment of a NWT arts council to organize exhibits, and to publish an annual magazine of northern essays were proposed. It was concluded that these ideas would be both too costly and too complicated.

The Federal Government Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND had enforced a maximum amount of money that an individual could spend at any craft shop in the NWT (which then included Nunavut): “Sales at any one time to local residents, travelling staff, or visitors who are not retailers, should be limited to a total of $50.00 for items under $25.00, and to a total of $100.00 for items over $25.00. The sale of single items worth more than $100 will be allowed as long as they are considered to be a single sale.” 

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In 1968, this rule was abolished. This rule was established to163 “ensure that national marketing arrangements were followed and that the bulk of our departmental production moved to southern markets though Canada Arctic Producers.” This rule enforced that arts and crafts were not made for local enjoyment and use but instead for southern audiences.

Canadian Arctic Producers (CAP) was initially formed as a private company under the sponsorship of the Federal Government Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the Co-operative Union of Canada. The company, CAP, was set up to serve as a central marketing outlet for all arctic producers, with its headquarters in Ottawa. CAP began to sell shares to the Arctic Coops and Northern Producers in 1971, thus transforming into a cooperative that remains in operation today.

Museum of the North operated as a volunteer society in Yellowknife. They built what is now the Williams Electronics building. Museum of the North ran there from 1963-70. The GNWT took it over and ran until 1974 while planning for the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (PWNHC) which opened in 1979. Their collections moved over to the PWNHC once it opened.

Modeled after the program in Aklavik, the Tuktoyaktuk Fur Garment Project was established to provide income opportunities and vocational skills to Tuktoyaktuk residents. Soapstone carvings, ulu knives and a few other craft items made by men were sold in the Tuktoyaktuk Fur Garment Shop, but most items were made by local women, including parkas, mitts, slippers, mukluks, hats, wall hangings, placemats and dolls. In 1968, the fur garment shop was incorporated as a community-owned and operated cooperative, the Nanuk Cooperative Association, which took over responsibilities for the day-to-day operations. The Tuktoyaktuk Fur Garment Shop ceased operations in the early 1980s.

In Ulukhaktok (formally Holman), Father Henri Tardy helped establish the Holman Eskimo Co-operative in 1961 and he encouraged prospective artists as a form of economic development. The first 10 prints were sent to the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council for review in 1963. In 1965, Helen Kalvak, Victor Ekootak, Jimmy Memorana, Harry Egotak, and William Kagyut created the first annual Holman print collection of 30 limited edition prints, which became an immediate market and artistic success. The ability of Ulukhaktok artists to change, develop, and adapt has allowed their production to continue and remain vibrant for over 40 years. In 2001, the Winnipeg Art Gallery staged “Holman: Forty years of Graphic Art,” an exhibition that recognized a truly remarkable collection of artists and their work.

The Fort Providence Women’s Institute formed in 1960 as a branch of the national movement, the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada. There were 8 branches of Women’s Institutes in the NWT Mackenzie District (in Discovery, Inuvik, Ft. Providence, Ft. McPherson, Ft. Smith, Ft. Good Hope, Ft. Simpson and, the Beaufort Delta) with more branches in the Eastern Arctic. The Fort Providence WI was the first in the territory and had a craft making program where participants would learn how to make cushions, arm bands, moccasins in quillwork, beadwork and embroidery. They also hosted workshops to teach men to make snowshoes, toboggans, and medicine drums. They had 16 members: 5 white settler women and 11 Indigenous women. They ran a newsletter called the “Northern Lights Bulletin” and marketed mail order crafts.

In 1959 the Department of Northern Affairs established a fur garment training project in Aklavik to train women to make garments that could be marketed locally and across Canada. By the end of 1963, they had formed a cooperative, hired a manager and had around 18 ladies as members of the co-op making and selling fur parkas, mittens, and boots. In 1965 it was estimated that the Project, employing local women, returned about $50,000 to the community annually. In 1977 management of the co-op was transferred to the GNWT’s department of Economic Development and Tourism. The project eventually closed in the 1980s.

The original group was composed of Ruth Stanton, alongside Eugenia Ingraham, Ernie Boffa, J. McNiven, J. McElroy, and Didi Woolgar. The Guild supplied Inuit in Kugluktuk and local Dene women with materials and sold their work for them in Yellowknife. The Guild is still in operation today as “The Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts,” mainly creating programming around ceramics and fibre arts.

Moose hair and caribou tufting was born around the Bouvier/Lafferty kitchen tables in Fort Providence NWT by three Métis women Catherine (Beaulieu) Bouvier, Celine Laviolette Lafferty, Madeleine (Mrs. Boniface) Lafferty. Tufting was invented during or shortly after WW1 in Fort Providence when commercial materials like silk and beads were available. Lafferty used this technique in the 1920s and 1930s to imitate the yarn punchwork of nuns teaching at the residential school. The technique spread quickly through the territory, taking hold in nearly every community.

Art and decorative objects has been produced in what is now known as the NWT long before European contact. Beautiful hide clothing, porcupine quillwork, and birchbark baskets are among the earliest artforms recorded upon contact152 though many other forms were used since time immemorial including: birchbark baskets, fishnets, snowshoes, fish traps, willow root/spruce root baskets, birch bark biting, fish scale art, parkas, mittens, and other clothing.