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Established | 1989 |
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Location | Fourth Street and Independence Avenue, Southwest, Washington D.C. (main location) |
Coordinates | 38°53′18″N77°01′00″W / 38.8883°N 77.0166°W |
Visitors | 701,021 (2023) [1] |
Director | Cynthia Chavez Lamar |
Public transit access | Federal Center SW (main location) |
Website | www |
The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. [2]
The museum has three facilities. The National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opened on September 21, 2004, on Fourth Street and Independence Avenue, Southwest. The George Gustav Heye Center, a permanent museum, is located at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, opened in October 1994. The Cultural Resources Center, a research and collections facility, is located in Suitland, Maryland. The foundations for the present collections were first assembled in the former Museum of the American Indian in New York City, which was established in 1916, and which became part of the Smithsonian in 1989.
Fundraising and advocacy for the creation of what would eventually become the National Museum of the American Indian launched in 1982 at the Kennedy Center's Night of the First Americans event. [3] In conjunction with this star-studded gala, Retha Walden Gambaro organized an exhibition featuring 120 Native American artists. [3] [4] Gambaro was president of the Amerindian Circle of the Smithsonian Institution, an artist in her own right, co-owner of the first gallery in the U.S. capital dedicated to Native American artists, and an early champion for the creation of a national museum dedicated to Native American art and culture. [5] [6]
Following controversy over the discovery by Indian leaders that the Smithsonian Institution held more than 12,000–18,000 human remains, mostly in storage, United States Senator Daniel Inouye introduced in 1989 the National Museum of the American Indian Act. [7] Passed as Public Law 101-185, it established the National Museum of the American Indian as "a living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions". [8] The Act also required that human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony be considered for repatriation to tribal communities, as well as objects acquired illegally. Since 1989 the Smithsonian has repatriated over 5,000 individual remains – about 1/3 of the total estimated human remains in its collection. [9]
On September 21, 2004, for the inauguration of the Museum, Senator Inouye addressed an audience of around 20,000 American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, which was the largest gathering in Washington D.C. of indigenous people to its time. [10]
The creation of the museum brought together the collections of the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, founded in 1922, and the Smithsonian Institution. [11] The Heye collection became part of the Smithsonian in June 1990, [12] and represents approximately 85% of the holdings of the NMAI. [13] The Heye Collection was formerly displayed at Audubon Terrace in Uptown Manhattan, but had long been seeking a new building. [11]
The Museum of the American Indian considered options of merging with the Museum of Natural History, accepting a large donation from Ross Perot to be housed in a new museum building to be built in Dallas, or moving to the U.S. Customs House. The Heye Trust included a restriction requiring the collection to be displayed in New York City, and moving the collection to a Museum outside of New York aroused substantial opposition from New York politicians. The current arrangement represented a political compromise between those who wished to keep the Heye Collection in New York, and those who wanted it to be part of the new NMAI in Washington, DC. [14] The NMAI was initially housed in lower Manhattan at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, which was refurbished for this purpose and remains an exhibition site; its building on the Mall in Washington, DC opened on September 21, 2004. [11] [15]
In January 2022, the Smithsonian announced that Cynthia Chavez Lamar, an employee since 2014, would take over as director of NMAI on February 14. [16] [17] Her position will also oversee the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland. [16] [18] As an enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, she will be the first Native American woman to serve as a Smithsonian museum director. [16] [18] [19] Previously, she was NMAI's acting associate director for collections and operations, and had also interned at the museum in 1994, and worked there as an associate curator from 2000 to 2005. [16] [17]
Before Chavez Lamar, Machel Monenerkit had been the Acting Director, taking the position in January 2021. [18] [20] As of 2023, Greg Sarris serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. [21]
Kevin Gover was the director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian beginning December 2007 until January 2021. He is currently the Under Secretary for Museums and Culture at the Smithsonian. He is a former professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in Tempe, an affiliate professor in its American Indian Studies Program and co-executive director of the university's American Indian Policy Institute. Gover, 52, grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and of Comanche descent. He received his bachelor's degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and his J.D. degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. He was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from Princeton University in 2001. [22]
Gover succeeded W. Richard West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne), who was the founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian (1990–2007). [22]
West was strongly criticized in 2007 for having spent $250,000 on travel in four years and being away from the museum frequently on overseas travel. This was official travel funded by the Smithsonian, [23] and many within the Native American community offered defenses of West and his tenure. [24] [25]
The museum of American Indian has three branches: National Museum of the American Indian in the National Mall (Washington, D.C.), George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, and the Cultural Resources Center in Maryland. The National Native Americans Veterans Memorial is also located near the museum.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall was held on September 28, 1999. [26] The museum opened on September 21, 2004. [27]
Fifteen years in the making, it was the first national museum in the country dedicated exclusively to Native Americans. The five-story, 250,000-square-foot (23,000 m2), curvilinear building is clad in a golden-colored Kasota limestone designed to evoke natural rock formations shaped by wind and water over thousands of years.
The museum is set in a 4.25 acres (17,200 m2)-site and is surrounded by simulated wetlands. The museum's east-facing entrance, its prism window and its 120-foot (37 m) high space for contemporary Native performances are direct results of extensive consultations with Native peoples. Similar to the Heye Center in Lower Manhattan, the museum offers a range of exhibitions, film and video screenings, school group programs, public programs and living culture presentations throughout the year.
The museum's architect and project designer is Canadian Douglas Cardinal (Blackfoot); its design architects are GBQC Architects of Philadelphia and architect Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw). Disagreements during construction led to Cardinal's being removed from the project, but the building retains his original design intent. He provided continued input during the museum's construction. The structural engineering firm chosen for this project was Severud Associates.
The museum's project architects are Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects Ltd. of Seattle and SmithGroup of Washington, D.C., in association with Lou Weller (Caddo), the Native American Design Collaborative, and Polshek Partnership Architects of New York City; Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi) and Donna House (Navajo/Oneida) also served as design consultants. The landscape architects are Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects Ltd. of Seattle and EDAW, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia.
In general, Native Americans have filled the leadership roles in the design and operation of the museum and have aimed at creating a different atmosphere and experience from museums of European and Euro-American culture. Donna E. House, the Navajo and Oneida botanist who supervised the landscaping, has said, "The landscape flows into the building, and the environment is who we are. We are the trees, we are the rocks, we are the water. And that had to be part of the museum." [28] This theme of organic flow is reflected by the interior of the museum, whose walls are mostly curving surfaces, with almost no sharp corners.
The Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe has five stations serving different regional foods: Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso-America, and the Great Plains. [29] Mitsitam's first Executive Chef was the Diné chef Freddie Bitsoie. [30] The museum has published a Mitisam Cafe Cookbook. [31]
George Gustav Heye (1874–1957) traveled throughout North and South America collecting native objects. His collection was assembled over 54 years, beginning in 1903. He started the Museum of the American Indian and his Heye Foundation in 1916. The Heye Foundation's Museum of the American Indian opened to the public on Audubon Terrace in New York City in 1922.
The museum at Audubon Terrace closed in 1994 and part of the collection is now housed at The Museum's George Gustav Heye Center, that occupies two floors of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan. The Beaux Arts-style building, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, was completed in 1907. It is a designated National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. The center's exhibition and public access areas total about 20,000 square feet (2,000 m2). The Heye Center offers a range of exhibitions, film and video screenings, school group programs and living culture presentations throughout the year.
In Suitland, Maryland, the National Museum of the American Indian operates the Cultural Resources Center, an enormous, nautilus-shaped building which houses the collection, a library, and the photo archives. The Cultural Resources Center opened in 2003. [32]
The National Native American Veterans Memorial honors American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian veterans who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces during every American conflict since the American Revolution. It was originally authorized by Congress in 1994 with amendments in 2013. [33]
The national memorial was unveiled with a virtual event on Veterans Day 2020, with a dedication ceremony postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. [34] The ceremony was held on November 11, 2022, and included a procession of more than 1,500 Native veterans from more than 120 Native nations. [35] The memorial comprises a vertical steel circle standing on a stone drum, surrounded by benches and engravings of the logos of the military branches. [36] Four stainless steel lances are incorporated around the benches where veterans, family members, tribal leaders, and other visitors can tie cloths for prayers and healing. [37]
The memorial was designed by Cheyenne and Arapaho artist Harvey Pratt and is titled Warriors' Circle of Honor. Jurors unanimously selected the design concept from among more than 120 submissions. [37]
The National Museum of the American Indian is home to the collection of the former Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The collection includes more than 800,000 objects, as well as a photographic archive of 125,000 images. It is divided into the following areas: Amazon; Andes; Arctic/Subarctic; California/Great Basin; Contemporary Art; Mesoamerican/Caribbean; Northwest Coast; Patagonia; Plains/Plateau; Woodlands.
The collection, which became part of the Smithsonian in June 1990, was assembled by George Gustav Heye (1874–1957) during a 54-year period, beginning in 1903. He traveled throughout North and South America collecting Native objects. Heye used his collection to found New York's Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation and directed it until his death in 1957. The Heye Foundation's Museum of the American Indian opened to the public in New York City in 1922.
The collection is not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. When the National Museum was created in 1989, a law governing repatriation was drafted specifically for the museum, the National Museum of the American Indian Act, upon which NAGPRA was modeled. [38] In addition to repatriation, the museum engages in dialogues with tribal communities regarding the appropriate curation of cultural heritage items. For example, the human remains vault is smudged once a week with tobacco, sage, sweetgrass, and cedar, and sacred Crow objects in the Plains vault are smudged with sage during the full moon. If the appropriate cultural tradition for curating an object is unknown, the Native staff uses their own cultural knowledge and customs to treat materials as respectfully as possible. [39]
The museum has programs in which Native American scholars and artists can view NMAI's collections to enhance their own research and artwork.
In 2014 NMAI opened a new exhibition Nation to Nation: Treaties, curated by Indian rights activist Suzan Shown Harjo. [40] The exhibit is built around the Two Row Wampum Treaty, known from both Indian oral tradition and a written document that some believe is a modern forgery. [41] [42] [43] [44] Museum reviewer Diana Muir Appelbaum has said, "There is no evidence that there ever was a 1613 treaty" and describes NMAI as "a museum that peddles fairy tales." [44]
Editor-in-Chief | Tanya Thrasher |
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Frequency | quarterly |
Circulation | 42,640 |
Publisher | Smithsonian Institution |
First issue | 2000 |
Country | US |
Website | https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/ |
ISSN | 1528-0640 |
OCLC | 43245983 |
The museum publishes a quarterly magazine, called the American Indian, which focuses on a wide range of topics pertaining to Native Americans. It won the Native American Journalists Association's General Excellence awards in 2002 and 2003. The magazine's mission is to: "Celebrate Native Traditions and Communities". [45]
The National Museum of the American Indian indigenous-focused curatorial strategy has been criticized by visitors expecting to see the same depictions that traditional museums present. Two Washington Post writers, Fisher and Richard, expressed "irritation and frustration at the cognitive dissonance they experienced once inside the museum". [46] For Fisher, the displays did not meet his expectations that they would tell the familiar story of Indians' evolution from prehistory to modern times. Richards, who had a similarly negative assessment of the NMAI, questioned whether the broad array of Indian identities and individuals depicted in the exhibit really qualified as Indians. [46]
Jacki Thompson Rand, a Choctaw historian who served on the advisory board up to 1994, titled her reflections Why I Can't Visit the National Museum of the American Indian: "The absence of Native knowledge and the consequent inability to effect the required translation undermined exhibitions … Art and material culture were the preferred media for transferring knowledge about Native America to an unknowing audience. Why art and culture? … This meant, astonishingly, no treatment of the history of genocide and colonialism, then and now, or even of the basis of tribal sovereignty." [47]
Edward Rothstein described the NMAI as an "identity museum" that "jettisons Western scholarship and tells its own story, leading one tribe to solemnly describe its earliest historical milestone: "Birds teach people to call for rain". [48]
The museum had 2.4 million visitors in the year it opened. In 2014 it averaged 1.4 million visitors.
The Smithsonian Institution, or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967.
The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution. The center features contemporary and historical exhibits of art and artifacts by and about Native Americans.
The National Museum of the American Indian Act was enacted on November 28, 1989, as Public Law 101-185. The law established the National Museum of the American Indian as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The law also required the Secretary of the Smithsonian to prepare an inventory of all Indian and Native Hawaiian human remains and funerary objects in Smithsonian collections, as well as expeditiously return these items upon the request of culturally affiliated federally recognized Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.
George Gustav Heye was an American collector of Native American artifacts in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in North America. He founded the Museum of the American Indian, and his collection became the core of the National Museum of the American Indian.
Fritz William Scholder V was a Native American artist, who produced paintings, monotypes, lithographs, and sculptures. Scholder was an enrolled member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseno Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Luiseños, a California Mission tribe. Scholder's most influential works were post-modern in sensibility and somewhat Pop Art in execution as he sought to deconstruct the mythos of the American Indian. A teacher at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe in the late 1960s, Scholder instructed prominent Native American students.
According to Zuni mythology, Ahayu'da are the twin gods of war. They are also physical representations endowed with certain spiritual powers.
Mario Martinez is a Native American contemporary abstract painter. He is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe from New Penjamo, the smallest of six Yaqui settlements, in Arizona. He lives in New York City.
George Morrison was an Ojibwe abstract painter and sculptor from Minnesota. His Ojibwe name was Wah Wah Teh Go Nay Ga Bo. Morrison's work is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States.
Frederick Webb Hodge was an American editor, anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian. Born in England, he immigrated at the age of seven with his family to Washington, DC. He was educated at American schools, and graduated from Cambridge College.
Richard Elmer "Rick" Bartow was a Native American artist and a member of the Mad River band of the Wiyot Tribe, who are indigenous to Humboldt County, California. He primarily created pastel, graphite, and mixed media drawings, wood sculpture, acrylic paintings, drypoint etchings, monotypes, and a small number of ceramic works.
Gail Tremblay was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is known for weaving baskets from film footage that depicts Native American people, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.
Always Becoming is an artwork created in 2007 by Nora Naranjo-Morse, a Native American potter and poet. The artwork groups five sculptures made with natural materials, which allows them to gradually change over time. The National Museum of the American Indian selected and commissioned the artwork to be exhibited at one of its entrances in 2006.
Horace Poolaw (1906–1984) was a Kiowa photographer from Mountain View, Oklahoma.
Stephen Mopope (1898–1974) was a Kiowa painter, dancer, and Native American flute player from Oklahoma. He was the most prolific member of the group of artists known as the Kiowa Six.
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Pablita Abeyta was a Native American activist and sculptor born in Gallup, New Mexico, United States. She is the eldest daughter of Sylvia Ann (Shipley) Abeyta and artist Narciso Abeyta. She was named for her grandmother and her name Navajo name translates to "One Who Completes a Circle." Her family was originally from the Cañoncito Band of the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, located west of Albuquerque. In 2000 the reservation decided to change its name to To'Hajiilee.
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Elizabeth Conrad Hickox was a Wiyot master basket weaver and was considered one of the finest basket-weavers of her time. Her baskets differ from other Lower Klamath baskets through her own unique use of shape, technique, color scheme and design.
C. Maxx Stevens is an installation artist from the Seminole/Mvskoke Nation of Oklahoma. She often uses found objects and ephemera in her work which is centered on the concept of memories and stories. Stevens’ work has been described as “gritty and “both haunting and familiar” and prior installations have focused on the contemporary Native American experience such as the harmful effects of diabetes in Native American communities.
Kathleen Ash-Milby is a Navajo art historian and curator—currently Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum. She previously worked at the National Museum of the American Indian's George Gustav Heye Center for two decades.