Barry Herem is an artist, teacher, writer, photographer and award-winning poet whose work has been commissioned by many companies and organizations. He lectures on the art, landscape, and historic culture of the Northwest Coast throughout the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Herem has spent 30-years studying Northwest tribal art in British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska and has documented “a treasured store of haunting and controversial works, monumental in scale and long sequestered in a prominent tribal building known as the Whale House in the tiny but historic village of Klukwan, Alaska.”

The most famous of all Tlingit clan houses, the Whale House, located 125 miles north of Juneau, contains four immense totemic house posts and an 18-foot wide carved and painted cedar screen (circa 1830), recognized as the “greatest works of art ever created on the Northwest Coast.” The Whale House is closed to all except during short periods of significant ceremony. [From the Humanities Washington web site http://www.humanities.org/ Accessed 25 Jan 2005]