Personal challenge, physical and spiritual adventures, encounters with other cultures, the prospect of riches, a desire to build different societies -all of these are reasons artists have looked to Alaska for a new frontier. Unlike the rich tradition of Native art in Alaska, which is thousands of years old, European and American artwork of Alaska has a precise and much more recent starting point. These early works were attempts to understand and describe a new and 'exotic' people and place, to fit them into a more familiar version of the world.

At the time of contact with Russian explorers in the mid-18th century, Alaska was occupied by approximately 80,000 indigenous people. The phrase "time of contact" means the earliest time when a Native group had significant direct interaction with Europeans. This time varied for different parts of Alaska; therefore Alaskan Native groups have had somewhat different historical experiences through their contact with Europeans and Americans. In the early spring of 1942, when the Army Corps of Engineers arrived to begin building the Alaska Highway, Alaska's population was approximately 73,000. About half of those residents were Native Alaskans, members of indigenous groups who inhabited Alaska before it was colonized by Russia.