“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

Aristotle

The NN Cannery History Project is partnering with the Alaska State Museum to produce a world-class museum exhibition called Mug Up: The Language of Work that will share the oft-forgotten stories of the multitudes who canned salmon and created an ethnically diverse, economically vital, cannery culture.

Framing the Mug Up exhibition is its ‘big idea,’ that the cannery’s 15-minute ‘mug ups’ brought together diverse cannery workers, who provided essential labor and created a unique social milieu within the workscape of Alaska’s salmon canneries that, collectively, represented the industrial revolution of North. Inspiring our visitor experience is John Steinbeck, who famously wrote in Cannery Row that, the best way to write about canneries is “to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.”

Mug Up takes visitors on a building-by-building journey through a salmon cannery, using each space to spotlight the labor and social history behind one of Alaska’s most significant industries. Framed by ASM’s three temporary galleries and an ancillary theater, the Mug Up exhibition is presented into four sections: Storied Salmon, Working Waterfront, Cannery Community, and Cannery Caretakers.

The first gallery presents Storied Salmon, which offers visitors two separate entry points into the exhibition. Here, visitors encounter five sections that establish a “sense of place” and introduce them to Mug Up, the canned salmon industry and the unprecedented salmon runs on which Alaska’s rich cannery history is founded. Rather than chronological, Mug Up’s storyline is place based, therefore, visitors start and end the exhibition at the same point. Storied Salmon’s proximity to the museum’s children’s gallery makes it a prime spot for a family-friendly activity: designing a personal salmon can label.

The second gallery presents Working Waterfront, which features eight sections highlighting the specific and highly skilled work tasks involved in canning salmon and the diverse laborers who conducted it. Included in Working Waterfront is a scale model of the NN Cannery, created by Alutiiq artist Andrew Abyo. The third gallery presents Cannery Community, which features seven sections on the cannery’s social experiences that mirrored broader currents of American history. A fourth space serves as a theater where visitors can view the 30-minute Cannery Caretakers film (produced by Jensen Hall Creative), the five-minute The Rock: The Story of an APA Superintendent, Norm Rockness film (produced by Unangax filmmaker Anna Hoover), and several short digital storytelling videos (produced by Bristol Bay High School students). Overall, Mug Up includes 20 different sections and over an hour-and-a-half of professionally produced, original video content.

Visitors soon discover that, rather than machines, the Mug Up exhibition is about people, whose stories were sheltered in the shadows of history. Giving a face to the historically underrepresented is the ‘Cannery Chorus,’ an assembly of cannery figures represented through labels, objects and text, who, like Shakespeare’s Chorus in Henry V, guide visitors from building to building, introduce them to the diverse crews therein, and explain the undercurrents of the history and work activities.

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Alaska State Museum

The Alaska State Museums (a state educational agency comprised of the Alaska State Museum and the Sheldon Jackson Museum) identify, collect, preserve and exhibit Alaska's material and natural history and provide public access to services and collections of the Museums. The Alaska State Museums interpret and disseminate knowledge of the history of the state, its people, and its resources, and support others in these efforts. The Museums also assist and advise in the growth, development, and excellence of other museums within Alaska.

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