Between 1950 and 1980, a treasure trove of Inuit art – some 89,000 drawings in total – was created at Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) near the southern tip of Baffin Island, enabling the community of remote territory of Nunavut, Canada, to generate revenue. But very few of these works have come to light through the release of limited edition prints, with the Toronto market leading the way.
After a devastating fire destroyed similar archives in a near Arctic community, the Ontario-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection decided to acquire the Cape Dorset drawings in 1990, giving them a home. on. “Inuit art has always been part of our national identity,” says Sarah Milroy, McMichael’s chief curator, making the acquisition a no-brainer.
“It would have taken half a life without Ed’s machine”
Unfortunately, since then, the collection has only been accessible in person at the McMichael, which is based in Kleinberg, a village north of Toronto. It also required managing the work, raising conservation issues. So, for the most part, the art lingered in what Edward Burtynsky, famed Canadian photographer who would hit the scene in 2019, calls “high-priced, temperature-controlled vaults.” The drawings, he adds, “have had a pleasant, deep sleep, over 30 years”.
Digitization rouses the works from their slumber, allowing free and full access to McMichael’s collection of Inuit drawings, thanks in large part to Burtynsky and his bespoke ARKIV360 scanner, which he calls “my baby.” “During Covid, the outcry got really loud,” he says. “We were way behind in terms of digitization.”
Burtynsky realized there was a need for such a machine from his connections with Metropolitan Toronto University (formerly Ryerson University), which has an even larger collection, which has no been digitized yet. “We were the guinea pig,” says Milroy.
High performance, low price
The complex machine, originally designed in collaboration with Adam Lowe and the curatorial company Factum Arte, then tweaked and improved by Burtynsky and his team, is capable of rapidly scanning two-dimensional works at very high resolution. It was originally housed at the McMichael and is now based at Burtynsky’s studio in downtown Toronto, where a team of three work there full-time. While previous devices scanned some 100 drawings per day, Burtynsky’s proprietary machine and software can scan up to 900 works in a day while dramatically reducing costs. “It’s a couple of dollars each, up from $40 before,” he says.
“It would have taken half a life without Ed’s machine” to digitize the McMichael collection, says Milroy. “By October, we’ll have the whole kit and caboodle.”
The original oracle of Cape Dorset art is finally available to everyone
The works already digitized are accessible to the public on the Iningat Ilagiit site, whose name means “a place for the family” in Inuktitut. The site is available in English, French and Inuktitut; it includes a low-bandwidth option for users in remote areas with slower connections. In the final phase, an Inuit researcher will be hired to study the archives and organize a major exhibition at the McMichael scheduled for spring 2025.
As Jennifer Withrow, Head of Exhibitions and Publications at the McMichael, puts it: “This is a moment of transformation, both in the art world – the original oracle of Cape Dorset art, finally accessible to everyone – and in the museum sector, a cost-effective way to digitize a huge archive.
