The Exhibit

Museum Collections

Coming Home represents the donation of 130 of Michio Hoshino’s prints by his wife Naoko Hoshino to the Museum’s Fine Arts Collection. Twenty-eight of these prints are displayed in this exhibition.

Michio Hoshino did not feel he was creating art. He saw himself as a documenter of Alaska’s wildlife and landscapes. However, the way in which Hoshino envisioned his subjects and sought to capture them on film has made his photographs more than documentation. The donation of these images is important for their continued artistic value and appreciation and for the scholarly and educational use by researchers, students, and visitors. This collection of images continues the discussion of complex issues regarding the present health and future uses of the Arctic.

Coming Home serves to illustrate how objects from all the Museum’s collections work together to describe the environments of Alaska and contribute to the documentation of the state’s natural history.

The collaboration between Museum staff, University of Alaska Fairbanks faculty, and the community makes Coming Home a model exhibition. This approach weaves several perspectives for interpreting museum collections. In 2004, the University of Alaska Museum will double in size, enabling more extensive, and similarly interpreted, exhibitions of our cultural and natural history collections.



Community Interpretation

Coming Home was produced through the joint work of the Museum staff, University of Alaska Fairbanks faculty, and the community. Members of Alaska’s scientific, cultural, and photographic communities were asked to observe and comment on Hoshino’s photographs. These specialists shared their intimacy with, and knowledge of, animal behaviors, the features of the Alaskan landscape, and the peoples of Alaska. Also friends and colleagues of Michio Hoshino, they offered us a firsthand and personal look at his work.

The curatorial staff from several Museum collections brought their disciplines to Coming Home to enhance and tell about the complexity of Alaska’s ecosystems. The Ethnology and Archaeology departments researched the technology of tools that have been designed for people to adapt to the arctic environment. The Herbarium and the Mammals, Earth Sciences, and Birds departments prepared the animal study skins, the plant sheets, and the taxidermy, some of which are from the Museum’s origin in the 1930s. These specimens represent the baseline data and the depth of long-term and ongoing Museum research. The Museum’s Education and Exhibition and Design departments structured the exhibit themes to tell the story of Hoshino’s explorations around the state.