National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)
Kevin Gover, Director
In 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was established by an Act of Congress transferring the distinguished collections of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, to the Smithsonian Institution. The mission of the museum is to advance knowledge and understanding of Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere—past, present, and future—through partnership with Native people and others. The museum works to support the continuance of culture, traditional values, and transitions in contemporary Native life.
As a source for research, the National Museum of the American Indian offers not only one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Native American objects in the world, but also significant archival, photograph, and film and video collections. The museum’s research programs are essential to its operation. The professional staff is concerned with exhibitions, public programs, and educational programs as well as collections research and other curatorial duties. Discussions, seminars, and symposia support the exchange of ideas among national and international researchers and the general public. Publication opportunities are available through exhibition and collection-related catalogues as well as scholarly books that explore the history and significance of Native cultures and offer Native perspectives.
To compliment its research programs, the museum offers educational opportunities, interpretive programming, and hands-on workshops for the general public, families, and school groups at facilities in Washington, D.C., and New York City. NMAI’s Education Office offers professional development for educators, and creates teaching materials for classroom use. The museum’s Cultural Arts programming provides opportunities for visitors to experience the living arts, lives, and concerns of Native peoples through performances by artists, musicians, dancers, actors, writers, and storytellers as well as film and video programs. NMAI’s Film and Video Center (FVC), located at the George Gustav Heye Center in New York organizes the biennial Native American Film and Video Festival, one of the country’s longest-running Native film festivals. The FVC’s bilingual (English/Spanish) website, www.nativenetworks.si.edu, offers a wealth of information about Native media.
In addition to the Smithsonian fellowships, NMAI provides educational opportunities through its own internship and fellowship programs. These programs are designed for students interested in the museum profession and related programming. They offer exceptional guided work and/or research experience using the resources of NMAI. Placements can be made at any of the museum’s three facilities. To learn more about these opportunities or to apply, please visit our website, www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.
Facilities
The George Gustav Heye Center (GGHC), located in the historic Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, opened to the public in 1994. The GGHC hosts exhibitions, music and dance performances, films, and symposia. It also houses the museum’s internationally recognized Film and Video Center.
The Cultural Resources Center (CRC), a state-of-the-art facility in Suitland, Maryland, houses the more than 800,000 objects in the museum’s collections and serves as a hands-on research center for Native and non-Native visitors.
The museum on the National Mall, opened to the public in 2004, in Washington, D.C., is the museum’s major exhibition space—offering three floors of permanent and changing exhibitions. The building is also a center for performances, films, special events, and educational activities.
Collections
The NMAI’s collections holdings total approximately 1 million items, organized as four major collection categories. While discrete, the collections are intertwined: each contains items that refer to and document one another: the Photo and Media Archives include images of NMAI objects in use in Native communities or in excavation contexts and the Paper Archives includes fieldnotes and accompanying documentation for all aspects of the collection.
Object Collections
There are more than 840,000 items represented by 270,000+ catalogue numbers, divided into Archaeology, Ethnology, and Modern and Contemporary Arts. The collections represent all major culture areas of the Americas and almost all tribes of the United States, most of those from Canada, and a smaller number from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Chronologically, the collection includes artifacts from the Paleo-Indian period to contemporary art. Object types range from the strictly utilitarian to masterworks of Native American art. Many are of great historical or aesthetic importance.
Photographic Archives
There are approximately 324,000 images documenting nearly all aspects of Native American life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present as well as images document Museum of the American Indian and NMAI events, exhibits, staff research, expeditions throughout the hemisphere, repatriations, and behind-the-scenes work. Media Archives (approximately 12,000 items) document Native American life in North, Central, and South America; NMAI events, exhibits, behind-the-scenes work, and objects; Native-produced media created from the late 1800s through the present. The collections include museum production materials, including raw footage, finished productions, research recordings, and recordings of NMAI events.
Paper Archives
There are 1522 linear feet of records that date from the 1860s to the present preserve the documentary history of the NMAI, its predecessor, the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (MAI), and their collections as well as other materials, including the organizational papers of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and related papers.
MUSEUM SCHOLARSHIP GROUP
The Museum Scholarship Group (MSG) conducts original research and provides curatorial support for scholarly publications, exhibitions, and educational programming and provides museum staff with substantive factual and culturally appropriate information in the multidisciplinary field of American Indian studies. The disciplines of history, anthropology, geography, and art provide cohesion and context for the museum’s diverse programming. In keeping with the museum’s unique mission, research focuses on Indigenous perspectives, and includes active and reciprocal engagement with indigenous communities to ensure that research is not only balanced and equitable, but also empowers Indigenous peoples to exercise authority over their own cultural expression.
Staff undertakes research on NMAI collections, material culture, museum history and interpretation, research and collaborative methodologies, individuals associated with the collections, and other subjects. The museum seeks to coordinate the overall improvement and enhancement of all NMAI collections information, set and maintain information standards, and make collections information accessible to staff and all external constituents.
In 2008, within the Museum Scholarship Group, NMAI established an Office for Latin America (OLA) to effectively direct and coordinate NMAI skills, expertise, and efforts in support of work with Latin American Indigenous communities and research, public programs, repatriation efforts and collections study related to Latin America. OLA coordinates several Latin American initiatives and projects and guides these efforts toward increased effectiveness through relations with governmental authorities, indigenous community civil authorities, and culture-bearing leaders in indigenous communities.
Also part of the Museum Scholarship Group, the Repatriation Office, formed in response to the National Museum of American Indian Act (Public Law 101 185), handles repatriation requests; coordinates community visits; prepares research reports; and makes recommendations regarding repatriation and deaccession to the Board of Trustees. The goal of the museum’s repatriation policy is to support the continuation of ceremonial life among Native peoples; to foster and support the study by Native peoples of their own traditions; and to forge consensus between the museum and Native communities while accounting for and balancing the interests of each.
RESEARCH STAFF
ADAMS, James Ring, Senior Historian. B.A (1966)Yale College; Ph.D. (1983) Cornell University. Research specialties: Contact period and impact on European political theory, as determinant of subsequent legal and ideological framework for interaction with Native population; Emphasis on 16th century Spanish debate culminating in Valladolid disputation; 17th century English religious and economic exploitation culminating in John Locke; 18th century French narratives culminating in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
ASH-MILBY, Kathleen E., Associate Curator. B.A. (1991) University of Washington; M.A. (1994), University of New Mexico. Research specialties: Contemporary Native American art with an emphasis on non-traditional art forms including new media, painting, sculpture, installation and photography.
BARREIRO, Jose Eugene, Assistant Director for Research. B.A. (1988) University of Minnesota; M.A. (1990) State University of New York; Ph.D. (1992) State University of New York, Buffalo. Research specialties: Indigenous Caribbean Legacies; Indigenous Culture-based development; American Indian Contemporary Issues.
CURET, Luis Antonio, Associate Curator, Ph.D. (1992) Arizona State University. Research Specialties: Precolumbian archaeology with a specialty in Caribbean prehistory.
GANTEAUME, Cécile R., Associate Curator. B.A. (1979), M.A. (1994) New York University. Research specialties: North American ethnology and material culture, especially Apachean and Southeastern material culture; MAI-HF and NMAI ethnographic collections history; symbolic anthropology.
HER MANY HORSES, Emil, Associate Curator. B.A. (1979) Augustana College; (1995) Loyola University, Chicago. Research specialties: Northern Plains Tribal Arts.
HERMAN, Douglas, Senior Geographer. B.A. (1983) Dartmouth College; M.A. (1988), Ph.D. (1995) University of Hawaii, Manoa. Research specialties: Indigenous Geography, Native Science, Spiritual Ecology, Environmental Issues, Colonialism, Hawaii and Pacific Islands.
HIRSCH, Mark, Researcher. Ph.D. (1984) Harvard University. Research specialties: 19th and 20th century social and cultural history; U.S. Indian policy; Native American perceptions of time, work, and leisure.
HORSE CAPTURE, Joe, Associate Curator. B.A. (1996) University of Montana. Research Specialties: Plains Indian art and culture; curatorial practice; indigenous studies.
MATOS, Ramiro, Museum Specialist. B.A. (1959), Ph.D. (1962) University of San Marcos, Lima, Peru. Research specialties: South American archaeology; Andean archaeology, ethnology, ethnohistory, and cultural continuity; Inka culture and ethnohistory; grassroot community development in the Peruvian central highlands.
McMULLEN, Ann, Curator. B.A. (1981) Dartmouth College; M.A. (1990), Ph.D. (1996) Brown University. Research specialties: Native American ethnology, history, and material culture; ethnohistory; indigenous historiography; history of museums; history of ethnographic research and collecting; 20th-century Native American art/craft; invention of tradition/cultural revitalization; ethnicity, identity, and material culture.
PENNEY, David W., Associate Director for Museum Scholarship. B.A. (1979) New York University; Ph.D. (1988) Columbia University. Research specialties: Native American art and art history; museum practices, interpretation, and administration.
SEIG, Lauren, Research Specialist. B.A. (1991) University of Florida; M.A. (1996) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Research specialties: U.S. archaeology, repatriation.
SMITH, Paul Chaat, Associate Curator. (1973) High Point High School. Research specialties: Popular culture, museums, 1970s U.S. political activism, romanticism, contemporary art, photography, history.
TAYAC, Gabrielle, Historian. B.A. (1989) Cornell University; A.M. (1993), Ph.D. (1999) Harvard University. Research specialties: Chesapeake Region Native American Societies; Indigenous Social Movements; Museum Education; Sociology of Religion; Ethnic Identity.
VIDAURRI, Cynthia L., Folklorist. B.A. (1979) University of Texas; M.A. (1991) Texas A&I University. Research specialties: Cuban, Mexican, and Mexican-American/Chicano folklore; U.S. - Mexico borderlands; traditional medicine, religious folk art; ranching culture;folk religion; cultural/heritage tourism.
AFFILIATED RESEARCH STAFF
TRAUTMANN, Rebecca, Reseach Specialist. B.A. (1996) University of Texas, Austin. Research specialties: Modern and contemporary Native American art; Plateau baskets.
MUSEUM ASSETS
Collections Management
Research areas and interests of the Collections Management Office include compiling and maintaining collections information; controlling and monitoring environments; traditional care and handling of Native art and objects; packing and moving collections; location control; collections management databases; and the management of rights and permissions.
CONSERVATION
Conservation staff care for NMAI’s collections and actively pursue research related to the collection, preservation, study, and exhibition of Native American objects. Ongoing research focuses on: testing and evaluating materials for storage, packing, exhibition casework, and mounts; identifying hazards in NMAI’s collections and developing mitigation strategies; providing material analysis on items related to NMAI’s collections; identifying new technologies for preservation and treatment of collections; and developing strategies for training conservation students that incorporate collaborative approaches to conservation.
RESEARCH STAFF
HEALD, Susan, Senior Textile Conservator. B.A. (1985) George Washington University; M.S. (1990) Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program; Postgraduate Fellow (1991) Smithsonian Institution Conservation Analytical Laboratory and Cooper-Hewitt Museum. Research specialties: Conservation of ethnographic textiles and clothing, fiber identification, structural analysis of textiles, methods of fabrication, methods for storing and exhibiting textiles and clothing.
KAMINITZ, Marian, Supervisory Conservator. B.F.A. (1979) California College of Arts and Crafts; B.A. (1981), B.S. (1981) University of Tennessee, Knoxville; M.S. (1984) Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program. Research specialties: materials and techniques of manufacture, feathers, basketry, fibers, hides, sinew; conservation decision making with indigenous communities, new technologies for collections preservation and treatment, conservation training strategies incorporating collaborative approaches.
KAPLAN, Emily, Objects Conservator. B.A. (1984) University of Massachusetts; M.A. (1993) Queens University, Kingston, Canada. Research specialties: Materials and technology of archaeological and ethnographic objects of the Americas, particularly Andean region.
MCHUGH, Kelly, Objects Conservator. M.A. Art History/Certificate in Conservation (2000), New York University, Institute of Fine Arts; B.A. in Art History/Peace and Global Policy Studies (1990), New York University. Areas of interest: collaborative work with north, central, south American Native communities, contemporary art, materials and technology of ethnographic objects.