Ketchikan's Totem Heritage Center opens a new exhibit as it marks 50 years

Ketchikan's Totem Heritage Center opens a new exhibit, "Carrying Forward," at its 50th-anniversary reception Friday from 5 to 7 pm. The museum says the evening includes demonstrating artists, door prizes and light refreshments.

The Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultural center opened in November 1976 on land donated by the City of Ketchikan. Ketchikan Museums says it holds the world's largest collection of original 19th-century totem poles and that the anniversary celebrates its partnership with Alaska Native elders and organizations, artists, teachers, students and the community to preserve them. The poles were retrieved in the 1970s with the guidance of Native elders, the museum says.

The center's Native Arts Studies Program has offered more than 700 classes and workshops in weaving, basketry, design, carving and regalia making since the center opened.

Grants are also paying for changes to the building this fall. A Museums Alaska grant and an Alaska State Museum award, put at $23,870 in the city's 2025 museum annual report, cover two floor-to-ceiling cases for the classroom gallery, built by Artifex Northwest in Seattle. Museums Alaska credits Ketchikan Museums with $17,470 toward redesigning and re-curating the Classroom Exhibit, including the cases and mounts. The annual report said the Classroom Exhibit would reopen Nov. 6.

The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation is funding a $1,000 interpretive rail on the lower level. Museum Director Samantha Forsko told a May City Council meeting it would explain totem pole preservation as guided tours open there.

Ketchikan Museums chose "Spirit of Ketchikan Creek," by Miilgm Ts'amtii, Michael Jasson Milne, as the anniversary design. The museum says its salmon, current, creek-bank and spirit-face imagery represents returning salmon and those who watch over the creek. Forsko told the council in May the design would go on merchandise, some given away at the celebration and the rest sold next tourist season, with a $15,000 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation grant covering the project.