Walk: Start at City Market (13th Avenue and I Street), north on I Street, east on 7th Avenue, to Anchorage Museum at 7th Avenue and C Street, and meandering back, zig-zagging to avoid 9th Avenue road construction
Distance: 1 mile each direction
Camera: Pentax Optio W60
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Park Strip Soldier with Purple GunWest of I Street between 9th and 10th Avenues on the Delaney Park Strip
Veterans Memorial statue by sculptor Joan Bugbee Jackson of Cordova. How long the gun will stay purple is anyone’s guess.
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Habitat by Antony Gormley of London, UK
Sixth Avenue, just east of C Street
Good art challenges us to see and think about the world in ways beyond our everyday lives. Gormley’s monumental 24-foot high stainless steel sculpture of a squatting person does just that. Many in Anchorage are
derisive about the sculpture. Having seen it in person, looked through it, walked around it, been in it, and watched how light and shadow play with its angles, I’m a big fan. Habitat was a “1% for Art” project as part of the Anchorage Museum expansion.
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Anchorage Museum, New Facade, reflecting Nordstom across C Street
C Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues
Opened to the public May 29, 2010, the highlight of the museum’s new wing is the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center, which returns to Alaska hundreds of Native artifacts that had been languishing in Smithsonian basements. In Latitude 61, an Anchorage Daily News magazine section, Sheila Toomey
recently described how the artifacts came to be in our museum.
For those who can’t make it to Anchorage, a book
accompanies the Smithsonian exhibit; it’s fascinating and has gorgeous illustrations of the most significant artifacts in the exhibit. For anyone interested in Alaska’s Native peoples, or just in amazing art, the book’s well worth buying.
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An Elevator as Big as a Barn
Anchorage Museum
OK, maybe not as big as a barn, but it’s the biggest elevator I’ve ever seen. This is the elevator in Anchorage Museum’s new wing. The weight limit is 18,000 pounds and the room (a cube that size can scarcely be called a cage) echoed when the door slid shut.
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Up Close and Personal with Ancient Artifacts
Anchorage Museum
I quickly jumped back when my friend zoomed in on a shaman’s mask, making its eyes bigger than my head. It gave me an inkling why the exhibition’s curator warned some might find shamanic artifacts disturbing; I did.
The blending of ancient and modern technologies in the Smithsonian exhibit is impressive. An interactive computer screen sits next to every display case, and has a complete description of each artifact, often including archival photographs and drawings.
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Picture Bait
7th Avenue, just east of C Street
Flowers around the museum have always been a draw for Anchorage visitors. These women disembarked with cameras in hand and started shooting pictures while most of their group were still on the bus. In the background, the Atwood Building reflects lovely clouds.
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Bone Music II by Leo Vait of Homer, Alaska
7th Avenue, just west of E Street
Reminiscent of ancient whale bone houses I once saw through a blowing snowstorm in Wales, Alaska, Leo Vait’s Bone Music II sparkles with life in the Atwood Building’s park plaza. The sculpture is made of 3/16″ steel, sandblasted, coated with zinc, and painted with marine-grade coatings; the boulders are cast concrete. This is the
second incarnation of Vait’s Bone Music concept, the first having been done for Poopdeck Trail in Homer. Bone Music II was a “1% for Art” commission as part of the remodel after the state bought the Atwood Building.
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Focus on Statehood by Dan DeRoux of Juneau, Alaska
7th Avenue side of the Linny Pacillo Parking Garage between E and F Streets
Alaska statehood icons Bob Atwood, Bill Egan, Bob Bartlett, and Ernest Gruening are featured in a mural containing 512 individual paintings. The mural was
assembled from 32 five-foot square aluminum panels and was the municipal parking garage’s ”1% for Art” commission.
In a Juneau Empire
interview, DeRoux said, “It was a long time planning the engineering of [the mural] and the design of it and seven weeks to get it done … All the people in it were people who were involved with the constitutional convention and there are also Native leaders who were proponents of statehood and other people who were advocates of statehood” as well as other Alaska images.
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Reflections
7th Avenue between E and F Streets
The Atwood Building reflects the Linny Pacillo Parking Garage, Leo Vait’s Bone Music, and Dan DeRoux’s Focus on Statehood
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Reflecting on Reflections
7th Avenue between E and F Streets
Everytime I tried to figure out how it was possible for the east-facing wall of the Atwood Building to reflect the south-facing wall of the Pacillo Parking Garage my mind stopped working. Somebody with better spatial reasoning skills than mine will need to take on this puzzle.
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Wouldn’t Want to Damage the Gravel
Southeast corner of 8th Avenue and F Street
And keep off the weed while you’re at it. Sign outside a nondescript, signless office building.
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Route Map
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