Help UW art historian find missing Haida house models

Art history professor and Burke Museum curator Robin Wright is trying to track down 14 hand-carved Haida house models that have been lost for over 50 years.

This model of "Box House" was made by Haida artist Tom Stevens for exhibition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo in Chicago. It is currently at the Brooklyn Museum, but its frontal pole is missing. Read more about this model below. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Originally created for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the models were part of an exhibit on Northwest Native American arts and culture.

Fair organizers hired Haida artists from the village of Skidegate, BC., to make the models, which were based on real Skidegate houses and totem poles, and depict Haida family histories and clan crests.

“Each one of the houses is a fascinating piece of cultural history and a work of art,” says Wright.

Wright has been able to locate 15 of the houses so far, and she hopes that people will contact her with information about others.

“The missing models could be in someone’s attic or basement, or maybe someone’s private collection,” says Wright. “I’m hoping someone will see the houses online and recognize them.”

The model houses are about 3 feet square, and the frontal poles are from 3 to 5 feet tall. The houses and poles may have become separated over time. Wright thinks the poles are more likely to have survived, because they’re more compact.

More about the house shown in the photo on this page
The Haida artist Tom Stevens (b. 1837, d. 1902), who held the chiefly name tl'aajaang quuna, made this model of "Box House" for exhibition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A brown bear with the house doorway in his belly sits on a box at the bottom of the pole, with a fisherman named "Skulsit, a whale and Raven wearing a ringed hat at the top, but the frontal pole is missing. Stevens based this model on a full-sized house in Skidegate, B.C., that belonged to him.