Second Post - National Museum of the American Indian

For my second blog post I decided to review the National Museum of the American Indian website.  I was fortunate enough to visit this museum last time I was in New York City, and it was an amazing experience that I would highly recommend to others.  There were fascinating exhibits on Native American art, culture, and jewelry.  The website details their collection as, “Overall, 55 percent of the collection is archaeological, 43 percent ethnographic, and 2 percent modern and contemporary arts” (National Museum of the American Indian, 2015).   

 

 

 (Shoshone leggings and moccasins, National Museum of the American Indian, 2015)

The museum has a plains collection, plateau collection, and southwest coast collection, among many others.  The collections originated with George Heye, who starting purchasing pieces in 1897.  His first purchase was a Navajo hide shirt in Arizona and the collection continued to expand.  His collection grew to over 10,000 pieces by the year 1906.  On the website you can search through the collections by peoples, places, and artists.  One aspect of the website that I felt was very interesting is that there is a section about repatriation, which means that some of the items in the museum might be returned to the families and/or tribes where they came from.  “Human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony are all materials that may be considered for repatriation” (National Museum of the American Indian, 2015).  I think it is important to display the art and ethnographic objects, however, I am happy that there is also a way for tribes and families to get sacred objects back (National Museum of the American Indian, 2015).

 

 

(Herding the Sheep, Harrison Begay, Navajo painting, National Museum of the American Indian, 2015)

Work Cited:

Smithsonian. National Museum of the American Indian. 2015. Web. 6 July 2015.