Anchorage Airport Native Art Gallery

[This is a bit embarrassing. I thought I'd posted this yesterday, but it went up as a tab - you can see those just above here - home, anchorage film festival, chancellor search. So I'm posting it for real now.]

As often as I've gone through the Anchorage airport, I've never gone upstairs in Concourse C to the observation deck and Alaska Native Art Gallery.

Yesterday I took some time to check it out on the way to Seattle.  (When your daughter writes that she has a week off and do you want to visit, there's only one answer.)

The gallery is upstairs ( there's an elevator too) after you come out of security as you get into Concourse C, the long one where the Alaska Airline gates are.

The architect designed this so the window at the end of the concourse perfectly frames Denali (Mt. McKinley) on a clear day.  Yesterday it was, but it was hard with my little Powershot to get the mountain clear.   My memory (faulty as it is) says there didn't used to be a roof blocking most of the mountain.  But it is that white speck above the roof in the inset I put on the right.

There are some very good pieces in the gallery.  The white mask is by Fred Anderson of Naknek and the other is by Nathan Jackson of Ketchikan.

But I don't think think the art work they have is supposed to be getting direct sunlight as it was yesterday.  It probably doesn't happen often, but I imagine a museum curator would cringe.

The blur isn't that I was shaking, but it's the shadow of the lettering from the sun. 

I think this is "Going to the Mud House for a Party" by Rosalie Paniyak of Chevak.  Seal skin face, appliquéd nose, seed bead teeth, badger hair, bearded seal gut parka. . .

Admission to this gallery is a plane ticket to or from Anchorage since it is inside security.  It's also at the observation deck so there is a view of all the Alaska Airlines planes.

[UPDATE August 2012:  More pictures from this gallery here.]

I had an aisle seat so I couldn't get any pictures of the setting sunglow on the mountains.  It's raining in Seattle, but there is green grass.