SEPTEMBER 2012 - Photos of Otto Bear poured into the museum over the summer from as far away as Italy and New Zealand, some of them decades old. The celebration of one of the musuem's oldest exhibitions will help promote our next special exhibit, Hibernation and the Science of Cold.

AUGUST 2012 - The remains of an umiak discovered at the Birnirk archaeological site near Barrow have been dated at 1,000 years old, the oldest skin boat assembly in the Circumpolar North. The Birnirk collection was returned to Alaska last year and is now part of the museum's archaeological collections. Read more here.

JULY 2012 - Museums exist to collect, preserve, and research objects. These specimens help tell the story of a changing Alaska from vastly different perspectives, whether that is an ancient piece of fossilized wood that tracks the differences of millenia or a ptarmigan that changes seasonally. Read more here.

JUNE 2012 - Every day, people stop to take a picture of one of the most recognizable specimens in our collection. Otto, the 8' 9" brown bear in front of the Gallery of Alaska, has greeted guests for more than 40 years. Now we're looking for visitor photos to help celebrate this object named for Otto Geist, who developed the museum's initial collecitons. Read more here.

MAY 2012 - This exhibit follows five Fairbanks artists as they take their work from concept to completion. Art in the Making offers visitors an opportunity to become part of the art-making process by juxtaposing a finished work of art, video of its creation, the tools used, and the voice of the artist, transforming the process from a single moment into a deeper appreciation. Read more here.

MARCH 2012 - The seal stone was most likely found during World War II by soldiers stationed on a remote Aleutian Island transformed by a military looking to protect its frontier. But objects found on federal land belong to the federal government, which is how the artifact joined the archaeology collection at the UA Museum of the North. Read more here.

FEBRUARY 2012 - The University of Alaska Museum of the North has installed a new pipeline super pig on its grounds. A pig is a device inserted into a pipeline to clean, inspect, and perform other special duties.This pig, donated to the museum’s ethnology and history collection by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, replaces one donated in 1984. Read more here.

JANUARY 2012 - Thirty years after the first community members were trained to lead school children on tours of the museum's collections and exhibits, the program is still going strong. More than 386 people have become docents and tens of thousands of students have been captivated by the mysteries of the museum. Read more here.

DECEMBER 2011 - A large collection of archaeological artifacts has returned to Alaska, nearly 60 years after they were excavated near Point Barrow. The Birnirk collection represents a prehistoric Eskimo culture dating back to 500 AD. The collection has tremendous research significance and is an exciting addition to the museum's archaeology collection. Read more here.

NOVEMBER 2011 - Reproductions of paintings created during a 1950s retreat to the Brooks Range have been donated to the community of Anaktuvuk Pass. The originals will be housed at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, thanks to collaboration between the artist's family and the museum's fine arts curator. Read more here.

OCTOBER 2011 - Herbarium collection manager Jordan Metzgar is working on his Ph.D. at UAF, focusing on the parsley fern (Cryptogramma). He’s reconstructing the migration patterns of two Alaskan species (C. acrostichoides, the American parsley fern, and C. sitchensis, the Sitka parsley fern) after the last ice age, work that requires detailed molecular data. More here ...

SEPTEMBER 2011 - An 1841 Russian blockhouse is again sitting tall on the grounds of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. The roof was removed from the Kolmakovsky blockhouse in 2006 due to questions of structural stability and safety. In December of 2009, the National Park Service awarded the museum $75,000 to preserve the Kolmakovsky collection. More here...

AUGUST 2011 - A team of archaeologists and artists expected to find the prehistoric boulders adorned with petroglyphs that were previously discovered in the Noatak National Preserve when they returned to the site this summer. They didn't know they would make a new discovery during small-scale excavations: four decorated clay disks that appear to be the first of their kind in Alaska. More here...

JULY 2011 - Sometimes finding a fossil is as easy as a walk on the beach. That’s what happened in May when a member of a geological team working in Southeast Alaska chanced upon a find during an extremely low tide. Something caught team member Eugene Primaky’s eye. “I instantly thought 'fish'.” The fish turned out to be a fossil of a prehistoric marine reptile called a thalattosaur. It may be the most complete fossil of its kind found in North America. More here...