Beyond the Spectacle: Native North American Presence in Britain

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North West

Manchester Museum

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

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Manchester Museum is part of The University of Manchester. Its Living Cultures collection includes extensive materials from North America including 112 objects from the Arctic. The Museum’s ambition is to build understanding between cultures and a sustainable world. As part of this, the Indigenising Manchester Museum programme, supported by the John Ellerman Foundation, intends to develop how the museum cares for and supports cultural agency and revitalisation and reconciliation with these collections.

Objects in the North American and Arctic collections are relatively small groupings of objects from many different peoples, recorded and believed to be from over 60 different Indigenous cultural groups. Highlights from the largest of these groupings of objects include carvings by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Charlie James, intricate carvings by Inuit peoples, and many examples of beaded and/or dyed quillwork clothing from Eastern Woodland peoples.

Please contact the museum well in advance of your visit to ensure that access to collections is possible.

HIGHLIGHTS (Images copyright of Manchester Museum)

Moccasins (detail), Eastern Woodlands

Kwakwaka’wakw Totem Pole Carving (1929) by Charlie James

Ivory Carving and/or Bottle, Inuit

World Museum, Liverpool

William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EN

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The World Cultures collections at Liverpool World Museum contain over 40,000 objects from around the globe, reflecting Liverpool’s status as a highly significant imperial port during the 19th century.

The collection contains a significant amount of North American material, with items from the Pacific North-West particularly well represented. Highlights include a Nuu-chah-nulth woven whaler’s hat, a totem pole made for the museum by Kwakwaka’wakw master carver Richard Hunt and an argillite bowl attributed to Haida artist Charles Edenshaw.

Please contact the museum well in advance of your visit to ensure that access to collections is possible.

HIGHLIGHTS (Images copyright of the World Museum, Liverpool)

Nuu-chah-nulth woven whaler’s hat. C. 1700-1850.

Kwakwaka’wakw totem pole carved by Richard Hunt.

Argillite bowl attributed to Charles Edenshaw (Haida).

Bold St. Warrington, WA1 1DR

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Founded in 1847, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery is one of the oldest local museums in the UK. The World Stories collections contain around 3,000 objects from around the world, part of the museum’s early mission to form a “miniature or synopsis of the universe”.
The collection contains around 200 Native North American artefacts mostly collected between the 1860s and the 1960s. Highlights include an example of a Blackfoot Shirt as well as objects made and used by the Inuit, Aleutian and Inupiat peoples.

Please contact the museum well in advance of your visit to ensure that access to collections is possible.

HIGHLIGHTS (Images copyright of Warrington Museum & Art Gallery)

Inuit snow goggles (ilgaak or iggaak), early 20th century. Cape Barrow (Haninnek), Arctic Sea.

Blackfoot shirt, circa 1900.

Aleutian seal-gut hat, 19th century. Made of seal intestines with coloured yarn woven into the seams for colour.