The “Signing of the Alaska Treaty,” widely considered Alaska’s most important historic painting, it will be displayed in Alaska for the first time.
It arrived at University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Museum of the North in early February, where it will be on display through early March when it travels to the Anchorage Museum to take part in a seven-month program highlighting the common links between Russia and Alaska. It will come to Juneau for a stay at the Alaska State Museum in late September.
Painted by Emanuel Leutze, who also painted “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” it shows the treaty’s negotiators meeting in the early morning hours of March 30, 1867, in the Washington, D.C. home of U.S. Secretary of State William Seward. A copy of the painting has been hanging the the Alaska State Museum.
This year is the 150th anniversary — or sesquicentennial — of the treaty’s signing. The exhibit in Fairbanks launches a series of 2017 events to commemorate a“Year of History and Heritage,” as proclaimed by Gov. Bill Walker in November.
The original Leutze might never have made it to Alaska were it not for the work of a team coordinated by Bob Banghart, who recently returned to the private sector after guiding the State Libraries, Archives, and Museum’s construction project to conclusion. Banghart was contracted by the Alaska Historical Commission to organize the logistics to move the painting from the Seward House Museum in Auburn, New York, to Alaska.
“The Seward House is not a lending museum. This was all new to them, and the painting is the gem of their collection,” Banghart said.
Banghart gives full credit to FedEx and Alaska Airlines for meeting the Seward House’s concerns making the painting’s tour of Alaska possible. Also helping on the project were Shari Paul of the Lt. Governor’s office, Jo Antonson of the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology, and Terrence Cole, the UA-Fairbanks history professor who got the ball rolling.
