Ketchikan's Totem Heritage Center marks 50 years with a new exhibit

Ketchikan's Totem Heritage Center, home to a collection of 19th-century totem poles, was set to open a new exhibit, "Carrying Forward," at a reception Friday evening celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The center opened in November 1976 on land donated by the City of Ketchikan. Its poles were brought in during the 1970s from the Tlingit villages on Tongass Island and Village Island and the Haida village of Old Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island. The Alaska State Museum and the Alaska Native Brotherhood retrieved them, with guidance from Native elders and technical help from the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Forest Service, according to Ketchikan Museums.

The museum says the center holds the world's largest collection of original 19th-century totem poles, and that the anniversary celebrates its partnership with elders, Alaska Native organizations, artists, teachers, students and the community to preserve them.

The center also teaches traditional Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian art. Its Native Arts Studies Program has offered more than 700 classes and workshops in weaving, basketry, design, carving and regalia making since 1976. Recent classes included formline design with Haida artist Reg Davidson, Ravenstail weaving with Evelyn Vanderhoop and model canoe carving with Tlingit master carver Tommy Joseph, according to the city's 2025 museum annual report. Joseph also restored the Chief Kyan pole and three of the center's house posts last year.

For the anniversary, Ketchikan Museums chose "Spirit of Ketchikan Creek," by Miilgm Ts'amtii, Michael Jasson Milne, as its design. Its salmon, current, creek-bank and spirit-face imagery represents returning salmon and those who watch over the creek, the museum says.

The design would go on merchandise, some given away at the celebration and the rest sold next tourist season, Museum Director Samantha Forsko told the City Council in May. A $15,000 grant from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is covering the project, she said.

Grants are also paying for changes inside the building. Awards totaling $23,870 from Museums Alaska and the Alaska State Museum cover two floor-to-ceiling display cases for the center's classroom gallery, built by Artifex Northwest in Seattle, according to the annual report. A $1,000 grant from the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation is paying for a new interpretive rail on the lower level that will explain how the poles are preserved, Forsko told the council.