Exhibition Reviews

Abstract

In the almost four years since The Arctic: While the Ice Is Melting opened (October 2019), we have experienced a global pandemic and now find ourselves teetering on the edge of catastrophic ice melt. With exhibits, elaborate installations, ceiling projections, and interactive stations, this award-winning exhibition frames Indigenous communities and the work of non-Indigenous researchers through the omnipresence of ice and ice melt around the Arctic, encompassing Alaska, Inuit Nunangat (Canada), Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Iceland, Svalbard and Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. It is expansive in its thematic outlook and asks us to think about an Arctic without ice and the implications of this for Indigenous societies and cultures. With the exhibition extended throughout 2023, and given the latest news on predicted summer sea ice levels, the urgency of its message is perhaps now even more palpable.