greenland

The Dramatic Plans For Greenland's New Museum

Greenland will soon get a new museum. Arch Daily reports that the team of BIG + TNT Nuuk + Ramboll Nuuk + Arkitekti won the competition to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country's capital Nuuk. The circular design will be perched on a steep slope overlooking one of Greenland's beautiful fjords. This design was chosen out of six proposals from Nordic architects.

The new museum will combine historical and contemporary art. The gallery surrounds an interior sculpture garden. The external façade of white concrete is expected to acquire a patina over time, a weathered surface meant to contrast with the sleek glass interior. The circular shape of the gallery also allows for different divisions of the exhibits. Visitors will enter through a covered opening created by a slight lift in the façade into a lobby with a view towards the sculpture garden and the fjord.

Tags: architecture, greenland, museum, nuuk

The Battle For Greenland's Rubies

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Jewelry

With rubies from Myanmar/Burma being banned by many Western countries, the hunt has been on for rubies that come from a less politically sensitive area. In the last few years, there has been increasing exploration for rubies in Greenland. Just as Canadian diamonds are sometimes seen as an easy way around the potential harmful associations with some African diamonds, Greenland's rubies seem like a no-conflict solution, one that could benefit both the companies investing and Greenland's people.

But as Marc Choyt over at Fair Jewelry points out, that may not be the case. He has written a series of posts that go into great depth on this complex issue. To summarize: for years, Greenland's Inuit people have come across rubies and picked them up on their travels and sometimes sold them but now with big companies such as True North Gems exploring the area for ruby deposits, some Greenlanders feel they are being pushed away from the ruby business. They assert that the rough ruby shown at right, valued at half a million dollars was confiscated from its Inuit owner and that it is just part of a campaign to keep the Greenland people out of the potentially lucrative mining business.

The story of what's happening in Greenland is complicated and Marc's done a very thorough job of looking at both sides. He traces the journey of Neils Madsen, a Greenlander who found himself caught up in the ruby battle simply because he wished to dig for rubies in an area where exploration was taking place. A conflict with people working for True North Gems and the government led to him forming the August 16th Union (the confrontation took place on August 16, 2007), a group whose objective was to secure the rights of all Greenlanders to artisanally mine and sell rubies. Right now Greenlanders are now allowed only to sell semiprecious gems, not precious gems. Madsen has circulated a petition on behalf of the August 16th Union, demanding the rights to have small scale mining and selling of rubies as guaranteed under Article 32. This petition has gathered 2600 signatures, which is four and a half percent of the entire nation of 57,000.

He also interviewed Andrew Lee Smith, Founder and CEO of True North Gems who says he and his company support of small scale mining and selling of rubies by Native Greenlanders as long as it is done within the parameters of the law (and as long as his company has the right to explore and potentially mine rubies in compliance with the laws of Greenland.) He believes that the August 16 Union's main issue is not with True North Gems but with the existing laws of Greenland and that the union is a loud, radical minority.

True North does keep a chain of custody and assurance of source on the stones so that the Greenland rubies aren't mixed with rubies from other places which is what happened initially with Canadian diamonds. Right now the company isn't selling materials since they need the consent of the Greenland government and a mining license (currently they are still in the exploration phase). They are hoping to establish a commercial ruby operation in Greenland and sell the stones as Greenland branded material.

Over at Fair Jewelry you can sign the petition to support the rights of native Greenlanders to mine the stones from their own land.

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Tags: greenland, rubies, true north gems, TrueNorthGems

Greenland's Largest Carved Ruby

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Jewelry

The largest recorded ruby ever discovered in the northwestern hemisphere, according to True North Gems Inc., has now been unveiled in its new carved format. The Canadian exploration company, unearthed the 440 carat uncut ruby in 2005 in the Fiskenaesset district of Greenland. It took Canadian gemstone carver Thomas McPhee 10 months to produce this 302 carat gemstone which is the first ever carved Greenland ruby. It has an estimated value of $500,000 Canadian.

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Tags: gem, greenland, jewel, ruby