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MASKS SENT TO ALASKA MORAVIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ARTIFACTS ON LOAN FOR ESKIMO EXHIBIT AT ANCHORAGE MUSEUM.

Morning Call - Allentown, Pa. Author: BRYAN HAY, The Morning Call

Copyright Morning Call May 6, 1996

The Anchorage Museum of History and Art had to go all the way to Nazareth to borrow Eskimo artifacts for its first major exhibition of ceremonial religious masks.

Four Eskimo masks and a show-and-tell kit containing an Alaskan flag, igloo model, toggled harpoon point, skinning knife, hide scraper and seal oil lamp were shipped north in October to be part of an exhibit that opens Thursday, said Susan Dreydoppel, executive director of the Moravian Historical Society.

"This is the farthest we've ever lent something," she said. "We have a strong collection of things Eskimo."

The four wooden masks, each about 100 years old, were brought from the Eskimo village of Chalitmiut on the Bering Sea coast by the Rev. Ferdinand Drebert, a Moravian missionary to southwestern Alaska from 1912 to 1954.

He assembled the show-and-tell box during his travels and took it to churches and organizations when he spoke about Alaska, said Dreydoppel. Drebert labeled the box "Gray Cottage," the 1740 log cabin that still stands on the Whitefield House grounds and served as his retirement home.

The masks he collected and donated to the Nazareth museum were used by the Yup'ik Eskimos in religious ceremonies to portray and influence the spirits of animals needed for survival, Dreydoppel noted.

One is carved to resemble a human face, with fish and seal motifs, while another has a human face with a bird hat and hand-like appendages. Others include a carved human face with large ears and long earrings, a human face with feathers, and otter or beaver motifs.

Most of the 200 masks in the exhibit are on loan from Alaska museums, except for the four from the Moravian Historical Society and entries from the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, Smithsonian Institute and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

Dreydoppel, who lived in Bethel, Alaska, and curated a regional museum there, had previously met the guest curator of the Anchorage exhibit. She visited the Whitefield House, home of the Moravian Historical Society, while making her rounds in the Lower 48 looking for artifacts that could be loaned.

"All the best stuff has long been taken out of Alaska," said Dreydoppel. "That's why the Anchorage museum had to look around the globe to find native artifacts."

Dreydoppel will return to Alaska later this week and speak about "Moravian Collecting in Alaska." He will also share in a panel discussion with representatives from museums in Fairbanks, Berlin, Copenhagen and Chicago. The symposium is part of a four-day Alaska Yup'ik Heritage Festival.

The exhibit -- "Agayuliyararput" or "Our Way of Making Prayer: The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks" -- will continue through Oct. 29.

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