Airport Terminal Artwork, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

The new Iqaluit International Airport opened its doors in mid-August with a grand opening on September 13, 2017.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) in partnership with the Government of Nunavut (GN) collaborated on a display featuring Inuit art.

Billed as ‘big and beautiful,’ the 9,000-square-foot-terminal offers significant exhibition space for artwork. When Nunavut asked the WAG to plan and oversee the art installation at the new terminal, the Gallery worked with the territory’s departments of Economic Development and Transportation, and Culture and Heritage, to bring artwork from both the GN and WAG collections to Iqaluit. WAG curators and prep staff traveled with artwork and installed pieces alongside GN staff.

In 2015 the WAG and the governments of Nunavut and Manitoba signed an agreement for the WAG to hold in trust the GN Fine Arts Collection of over 7,300 works on long-term loan. Largely kept in storage since before Nunavut formed in 1999, the collection is being documented, digitized, and displayed by the WAG before a permanent home is built for the artwork in Nunavut. The airport creates an amazing opportunity to celebrate the GN collection in Nunavut with its people.


Quick Facts
• The new airport exhibition includes
o 58 Inuit sculptures from the GN and WAG collections
o 13 GN wall-hangings that will be rotated every six months for preservation purposes
o Five large-scale murals by Charles Johnston that reproduce prints and drawings from the WAG Inuit art collection
o Five large-scale wall-hanging reproductions from original GN works
• The Winnipeg Art Gallery is Canada’s oldest civic art gallery and holds the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world.
• To celebrate the art and to honour the Inuit, the WAG is building an Inuit Art Centre, a transformative place led by the images and stories from the art, the people, and the land.

Quotes
It is an honour to bring together artwork from the Government of Nunavut and the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Inuit art collections for the Iqaluit International Airport. This ongoing collaboration is a testament to our dynamic North-South partnership.
—Dr. Stephen Borys, Director & CEO, WAG

The Department of Culture and Heritage is thrilled to have the opportunity to showcase some of our fine art collection at the Iqaluit International Airport. We will continue to look for ways to bring our art for Nunavummiut to enjoy, through continuing collaborations with the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
—Honourable George Kuksuk, Minister of Culture and Heritage

Art has the power to enrich the identity and purpose of communities, regions and whole generations. At the Iqaluit International Airport, I worked to capture Inuit art’s central role in influencing the local community and passengers coming and going through the new airport, creating a powerful threshold at the arrival and departure of Nunavut.
—Eduardo Aquino, Public Art Consultant

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Iqaluit [Population: 7,740 (2016)] - Capital city of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, located on vast Baffin Island in Frobisher Bay.

‘Iqaluit’ means ‘place of many fish’ in Inuktitut.

www.nunavuttourism.com/regions-of-nunavut/communities/iqa...

As the territorial capital of Nunavut, Iqaluit is the largest and fastest-growing community in the territory.

Iqaluit is located on Baffin Island at the northern end of Frobisher Bay near the mouth of the Sylvia Grinnell River and near beautiful parklands, that feature a range of landscapes, mountains, rivers, waterfalls and ancient Thule sites to visit.

Topography
Iqaluit is situated on gently rolling hills, with rocky outcrops and lush tundra valleys. The tides of Frobisher Bay at Iqaluit rise and fall eight to twelve metres (26-39 feet) twice a day — the second highest tides in Canada after the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

This exciting, dynamic city is the political, business, journalism and transportation hub of Nunavut, with an excellent airport. The landing strip is long enough to land the space shuttle, so it is often used for cold weather testing of the world’s largest new aircraft.

Formerly known as Frobisher Bay, the modern city of Iqaluit is rich with traditional Inuit culture. It is the home of many Inuit artists, filmmakers and musicians, plus there are arts and culture festivals staged in the spring and summer that bring artists here from across the territory.

The friendly people of Iqaluit — the ‘Iqalumiut’ — love to go out on the land, sea and ice at all times of the year to enjoy a variety of outdoor activities.

HISTORY
‘Iqaluit’ means ‘place of many fish’ in Inuktitut. The ancient Thule people knew it well. At nearby Qaummaarviit Island there are several archaeological sites containing thousand-year-old artifacts of these great Inuit ancestors.

The first European to make a big fuss about this place was the British explorer Sir Martin Frobisher in 1576.
He sailed into the bay and believed he had found a direct route to China, so he named it ‘Frobisher’s Straites’ after himself. He thought he discovered gold here too, shipping a large amount of it to England where it was recognized as pyrite — fool’s gold. In 1861, the American explorer Charles Francis Hall arrived in search of the lost Franklin Expedition. He learned from a local hunter named Koojesse that ‘Frobisher’s Straites’ was really just a big long bay and not the fabled Northwest Passage, so he hired Koojesse as his guide and geographer, naming an inlet after him.

By 1870, Frobisher ‘Bay’ was frequently visited by whaling vessels and fur trading began. Whaling died out in the early 1900s, but the fur trade expanded. Anglican and Catholic missions arrived. In 1914, the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) opened a trading post at Ward Inlet, about 64 kilometres (40 miles) south of here. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived in the 1920s.

Americans chose the location of Koojesse Inlet for a United States Air Force (USAF) base during WWII. The airstrip was operational by 1943. The HBC trading post relocated itself nearby and many Inuit families made permanent homes here. The settlement of Frobisher Bay was born.

During the Cold War 1950s it became part of the NORAD DEW line with a population of 1,200 people (40% Inuit) in 1957. The federal government of Canada brought in doctors, teachers, administrators, clerks and support staff. Large numbers of Inuit people continued to settle here. The USAF pulled out in 1963. In 1987 the community changed its name back to Iqaluit, reverting to the original Inuktitut name. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed here in 1993. By plebiscite in 1995 Iqaluit was chosen to be the capital of the new territory of Nunavut — which officially came into being on April 1, 1999.

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