Klukwan’s Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center recently landed a $107,000 grant from a national foundation which will be used to commission six original artworks for the facility’s Chilkat Cultural Landscape Exhibit.
The Surda Foundation, a New York-based charitable organization, chose the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center and 14 other projects from 1,000 applications for the grant.
According to the Surda Foundation’s website, “projects receiving grants were selected for the quality of the artistic practice and for the dedication to exploring critical themes that arise from or impact a community; and finally, for the project’s capacity to enable social change.”
Heritage center director Lani Hotch called the grant “a real boost” to the ongoing effort to keep the project moving forward. “It’s a real vote of confidence for our project to land a national grant of that scale,” she said.
The Chilkat Cultural Landscape Exhibit will consist of a large map encompassing the village of Klukwan’s ancestral boundaries. It will outline important place names, geology and ecology of the area, and significant trade routes, Hotch said.
The six commissioned art pieces will tie into the map by either highlighting a place or some other historical aspect of Tlingit people and their land, she said.
Hotch, as lead artist, will work with the six selected artists and project team. The pieces will include traditional media such as wood, leather, fur, beads, and natural fibers, and new art forms such as sculptured glass. Each artwork will be used to highlight some aspect of Klukwan’s history, culture, relationship with the land and its resources, or sense of value for place, connecting aesthetic vision with environment.
Hotch is currently on “pins and needles” waiting to hear whether the heritage center project will receive $750,000 from the Rasmuson Foundation. “If we get the Rasmuson Foundation grant, we are going to start construction again in August.”
The foundation should have a decision by late June or early July, she said.
The cultural center is framed in, awaiting interior work and exhibits. The total project cost is estimated at $7.4 million.