Alaska's museum muses.

• Author: Woodring, Jeanne
• Position: Alaska Life

Traveling across Alaska over a hundred years ago, Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson established churches and public schools - and collected enough Native artifacts to found the oldest continually running museum in Alaska, the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka.

"Jackson collected everything," says Carolyn Young, the museum's director of visitor services. "He wanted future generations of Native people to see how their fathers lived."

In fact, Jackson picked up so many items in his northern travels that he gave the Sitka museum one of the most complete collections of Alaska Native artifacts found anywhere.

At more than 50 other locations around the state, gifts from muses like Jackson live on in museums. Outlined below are a few of the state's outstanding museums. For a more detailed listing, send $1 to the Alaska State Museum, 395 Whittier Street, Juneau, Alaska 99801, (907) 465-2901, for its 30-page "Guide to Museums in Alaska."

Sitka's Splendors

Sitka lays claim to more museums per capita than any other city in Alaska (the Isabel Miller Museum, Russian Bishop's House, Sitka National Historic Park, Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center and Sheldon Jackson Museum, according to the "Guide to Museums in Alaska").

Of these five facilities, the Sheldon Jackson Museum stands out as the crown jewel. The first building to house Jackson's collection was constructed in the late 1880s. As his collection of Native artifacts grew, Jackson raised funds to build a larger building. Finished in 1897, the official Sheldon Jackson Museum belonged to Sitka's Sheldon Jackson College and the Presbyterian Church until purchased by the state in 1984.

As renovations have spruced up the museum in modern times, Carolyn Young, the museum's director of visitor services, says, "We have now fine-tuned our collection so that it exhibits all of Alaska's Native cultures."

This cultural diversity presents visitors with a collection of more than 300 Yupik and Inupiat masks, a very large basket collection, an assortment of bentwood boxes, a colorful array of Pacific Northwest Coast Indian regalia, animal-skin clothing, and boats, ranging from kayaks to a birch-bark canoe.

Jackson also collected thousands of smaller utilitarian pieces, that the museum houses in 72 drawers. "Visitors enjoy the drawer exhibit and say it is one of the things about our museum that they find themselves coming back to," says Young.

The Sheldon Jackson Museum is located on the Sheldon Jackson...