A Passion for the Arctic

In 2015, the Dutch collector Hans van Berkel donated his Inuit (and Chukchi) art and handicraft collection to the National Museum of Ethnology, now National Museum of World Cultures. Starting in the early 1970s, Mr. van Berkel built up the most important private Inuit-related collection in the Netherlands. He became inspired by the lives and work of Inuit hunters and carvers because of close contact with Leo Mol, a renowned sculptor in Winnipeg, Canada. Gifts from Mol were the first Inuit art objects in what later became the "van Berkel Collection." Reflecting his special interests, shamanism and spiritual culture are particularly well represented in a collection that portrays not only the skilled craftsmanship of Inuit and Chukchi artisans, but also shows the daily life of hunters, reindeer herders and their wives, and norms and values of these remarkable cultures of northern Canada, Greenland, and Siberia.