Peter Corey

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Category: Obituaries

Created on Monday, 28 September 2015 11:33

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Former Sheldon Jackson Museum curator Peter Linn Corey passed away on Sunday, September 20, 2015, at Sitka Community Hospital. He was 75.

There will be a celebration of life in the near future but no formal services are planned.

Pete was born Dec. 14, 1939, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Richard Murray Corey and Ruth Walker Corey. He graduated from Earl L. Vandermeulen High School.

Pete attended Colorado State College, now known as Northern Colorado College, in Greeley, Colo., where he studied anthropology. After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1963, he joined the Peace Corps (1964-1966) and was stationed in the Dominican Republic.

He received his master’s degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY Oneonta in historical museum procedures and upon graduation in 1967 took a position as curator in charge at the Indian Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. 

In the summer of 1969, Pete came to Alaska to become curator of collections at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, from 1969 to 1972. He next was  curator at the Totem Heritage Museum in Ketchikan before coming to Sitka, where he was curator of the Sheldon Jackson Museum for 25 years.

He did consulting work at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and at Plymouth Plantation.

Pete also taught at the University of Alaska, the New York State Historical Association and at Sheldon Jackson College.

He had a lifelong involvement with Native cultures, starting his various collections when he was 12. His master’s thesis was “The Use of Silver as Personal Adornment Among the New York State Iroquois in the Post-Contact Period.”

He pursued learning Native crafts and was a part of a carving group, where he worked on spoons, ladles and rattles.

His personal collections include masks, and an extensive basket collection from many different Native cultures. He was considered an expert on Native art of various types, and was often consulted about pieces, both as a professional curator and as a knowledgeable friend, generous with his time and expertise.

He is survived by his sister, Deborah Corey of Salem, Oregon; his brother, Jeff Corey of Miller Place, New York; and  nieces and nephews.