Qaumajuq, Winnipeg's Inuit Art Centre, Opens This Month
Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, is designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture with associate Cibinel Architecture. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
Qaumajuq, Winnipeg's new Inuit Art Centre, which opens later this month, takes a step back from the modernist cube while retaining a remarkable whiteness that reflects the circumpolar environment. The building, with its exterior white granite undulations, which call to mind crusty waves of windswept snow, and its curvilinear interior, speaks eloquently to the natural forms of the Arctic.
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The mezzanine gallery in Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
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Qilak, the main Inuit gallery in Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
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Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
But it's the abundance and quality of natural light inside the building that makes sense of the name chosen by Indigenous elders for the sinuous 40,000-square-foot structure that butts up against the rigid triangulation of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Qaumajuq translates as: "It is bright, it is lit."
A bank of exterior windows along the ground level offers passersby a glimpse into the space, where the virtual vault, a three-storey glass-encased display, features some 5,000 Inuit carvings, creating an astonishing focal point. Those windows, which seem to float the building off the ground, add to the interior brightness, while more light pours in from above through 22 round skylights.
Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
The building, unveiled virtually to journalists on Thursday via Zoom, seemed to glow, perhaps even more than Stephen Borys, the director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, who called it a "momentous" landmark.
The celebration continues March 25 and March 26, with a two-part virtual public opening starting at 6:30 p.m. each day. It will feature ceremonies, throat singing, hoop dancing and other displays of Inuit culture.
On March 27, the public can start visiting Qaumajuq, and view the inaugural exhibition, Inua, which means "life force."
The visible vault in Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
The show, a broad survey of Inuit culture from across the North, includes some 100 works by 90 artists. Some traditional works are featured, along with an array of contemporary sculptures, paintings, photographs and more. It was curated by a team of four Inuit curators led by Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk scholar from Nunatsiavut.
"What we really want to emphasize is that there's a long continuity of practice that goes back not just decades, but actually centuries and millennia, and these are practices that we are still seeing today," said Igloliorte. "Things are growing and flourishing in really exciting new directions."
Borys, in his remarks, described Qaumajuq, which houses some 14,000 works, the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, as a "transformative shift" in the gallery's efforts to support reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous peoples. It's a sentiment also reflected metaphorically in the building's design and its close, yet distinct, structural relationship with the main gallery, including interior connections on each level of the two buildings.
Qaumajuq, designed by American architect Michael Maltzan, incorporates a main 8,000-square-foot gallery with a 30-foot-hight ceiling and a smaller mezzanine gallery, as well as a gift shop, 35-seat classroom and seven penthouse studios that will be used for public programs.
Maltzan, joining the Zoom call from Los Angeles, talked about how his 2013 trip to the North with Borys influenced his design, as well as the need to challenge the traditional approach of displaying Inuit carvings in small vitrines, especially at a time when contemporary Inuit art increasingly incorporates diverse media, including video and installation.
The visible vault in Qaumajuq, the Inuit art centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. (photo by Lindsay Reid)
"The ambition was to create a type of space where the characteristics of light, scale and undulating form and vastness were in a true dynamic dialogue with the power of these exquisite objects," said Maltzan.
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