Nestled into the urban environment of the desert Southwest, the Heard Museum offers cool relief with the exhibition Life in a Cold Place: Arctic Art from the Albrecht Collection, on view through January 3, 2010. Through a selection of prints, drawings and sculpture from the Albrecht Collection, this exhibit examines the ways that Inuit artists depict their lives and survive in a cold environment. The artwork offers detailed, and often humorous, interpretations of subjects including land, sporting and games, wildlife and community.

For more than 6,000 years, the Inuit have made their homes in cold places from Siberia to Greenland, spanning the Arctic Circle. There are four seasons in this land; the longest, coldest season is winter when, in the farthest north, temperatures can reach -75°F with no sunlight for three months. In the same area, summer lasts a month or two with 24 hours of daylight. Life in a Cold Place offers a glimpse into the ways of life and means of survival.

Life in a Cold Place draws from the museum’s collection of more than 1,000 works of Inuit art donated to the Heard by Trustees Dr. Daniel Albrecht and Martha Albrecht in 2001. The Albrechts spent more than six years traveling the Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic to see the land, meet and talk with the people and collect artwork. The exhibit is co-curated by the Albrechts and Dr. Ann Marshall.

Interesting facts about the Inuit and life in the Arctic:

• The Inuit live in Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland.

• Winter lasts six to seven months north of the Arctic Circle with more than seventy days when the sun does not rise.

• Igloos can only be made of snow that has the right consistency and a skilled hunter can build an overnight igloo in under an hour. Windows in an igloo are made of clear ice or translucent seal gut.

• Dogsleds with the animals hitched in a line two-by-two are for traveling through a wooded area. In the northern lands with no trees, dogs are hitched in a fan configuration for pulling a sled.

• Traditionally, extended families came together in the winter to share resources and broke into smaller groups during the summer.

• In the late 1940s, the Canadian government brought Inuit people together into villages, creating many cultural and social problems as their former way of life with its hunting and fishing was replaced with commercial products supplied by welfare programs.

• Today, Canadian Inuit people live in prefabricated housing in small isolated communities, reached by supply ships that come once a year and by airplanes.

• Inuit art in the form of drawings, prints, sculpture and wall hangings was begun in the 1950s as a way for people to earn money as they tried to adjust to life in resettled villages.

From top: Pitaloosie Saita, RCA, b. 1942. Printmaker: Pitseolak Niviaqsi, b. 1947. Inuit, Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Four Generations, 1998. Lithograph, 11/50 35 ¼ x 26 ¼.
Unknown artist, Inuit, Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Hunter Carrying Animal Carcass, 1960s. Stone, ivory and sinew. 9 5/8 x 5 7/8 x 5.
Kananginak Pootoogook, b. 1935. Inuit, Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Caribou, 1997. Ink, graphite. 20 x 26.
Kanaginak Pootoogook, RCA, b. 1935. Inuit, Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Woman Rendering Seal Fat, 1987. Printer: Qiatsuq Niviaqsi. Stonecut, stencil, 4/50. 20.25 x 24.