ARCTIC WORLDS – From Alaska to Nunavut
Donation of the Baud/Jacot collection

In 2025, two major donations of contemporary artworks will significantly expand the Boulogne-sur-Mer Museum’s collection dedicated to the North American Arctic : the collection of contemporary Alaskan Native art by American patron Alice Rogoff, and the collection of contemporary Canadian Inuit art by French collectors Michel Jacot and Claude Baud.

Michel Jacot and Claude Baud are two French collectors who have played a key role in promoting Canadian Inuit art in France. Through numerous exhibitions, they have helped raise awareness of Inuit artists on the global contemporary art scene—most notably during the seminal 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou and at the Canadian Cultural Centre with the exhibitions Fantastic Kenojuak Ashevak (2013) et An inuit art cooperative in Canadian Great North, Kinngait, Nunavut – The Claude Baud and Michel Jacot Collection (2024).

The prints and sculptures in the Jacot-Baud Collection offer an immersive journey into Inuit artistic creation in the Canadian Arctic during the 20th century.

To mark this occasion, the museum is unveiling a new exhibition focused on Arctic cultures, presenting a renewed perspective on Native artistic practices from the 19th century to the present day. From Alaska to Canada, contemporary sculptures in glass and bone, alongside paintings, prints, and masks, enter into dialogue with historical pieces collected in the 1870s by Boulogne-born explorer Alphonse Pinart. Together, these works bear witness to ongoing processes of cultural circulation, reclamation, and renewal shaping the Arctic today.

More information : musee.boulogne-sur-mer.fr