Go to a Map of North America and look up . . . way up. If you keep looking up - way up North where the trees don't grow, because it's too far above the tree-line - you will soon see Baffin Island, within the Territory of Nunavut in Canada's Arctic. There, on the edge of a fjord, surrounded by sheer cliffs, within spitting distance of the Arctic Circle, you will find a hamlet called Pangnirtung, a small Inuit community of 1500 people. Within the Hamlet of Pangnirtung (meaning the gathering place of the bull caribou) is a shining star known as the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts & Crafts.

Situated on the leeside of a mountain (uqqurmiut, prounced oo-koo-me-oot, is an Inuktitut word that means “the people of the leeside”), the Uqqurmiut Centre is an Inuit arts facility conceived and constructed more than ten years ago to serve the Inuit artists and community of Pangnirtung. The Centre provides an effective way to present Inuit fine art and fine craft to southern markets, and this website is an extension of that idea.

Visitors to this website will, of course, be familiar with Inuit art. Sometimes still referred to as Eskimo art, this world-famous genre is known for its striking soapstone sculpture (formerly known as Eskimo carvings), featuring images of polar bears, seals, walruses, drum dancers, shamans and so on. Inuit art is not only known for its soapstone sculpture, but also for its distinctive fine art prints, drawings and hand crafts, the likes of which are displayed in art galleries all around the world. The community of Pangnirtung is home to its fair share of internationally recognized Inuit carvers, graphic artists, printmakers, tapestry weavers, and craftspeople. This website is intended to serve as a virtual art gallery or museum, where visitors can view and buy authentic Inuit art from these well-known Pangnirtung artists, while learning more about the Inuit from the Cumberland Sound area and elsewhere in the Arctic Circumpolar Region.

Please select a link at the left of this page to view some of our offerings. Thank you for visiting the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts & Crafts web site (www.uqqurmiut.com). We hope you will come to Pangnirtung in person some day. Please note that our contents and offerings are in the process of being developed and updated, so please check back with us again soon.