Eskimo Art, Inc.

Eugene Power launched Eskimo Art Inc. in 1953 as a non-profit corporation "to promote an interest and appreciation of Eskimo art in the US." Over four decades, Power's company was instrumental in bringing worldwide attention to the prints, sculptures and engravings of the Inuit Eskimos of Cape Dorset, West Baffin Island in Northern Canada. Power's son Philip Power dissolved the company shortly after his father's death in 1993.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Power founded University Microfilms International. (UMI) in 1938 and by 1953 had become a wealthy Ann Arborite and well known philanthropist and supporter of the arts. Eskimo Art Inc. was in part the result of Power's personal relationship with James Houston, a Canadian artist and authority on printmaking. In the late 1950s, Houston both introduced and trained selected Inuit men and women in printmaking techniques based on traditional Japanese methods, with the goal that they might sell their artwork to supplement their hunting activities. Before this time, several Inuit men at Cape Dorset produced sculptures.

...