July 4, 2012 - The Museum of the American Indian

The Fourth of July in Colorado was, from what I hear, kind of a bummer. It’d been so dry, there were so many very serious fires, the danger of more fires starting was so high, etc. that there were pretty much no fireworks. Almost all the usual professional shows were cancelled. But spending the Fourth of July in DC was awesome! (It’s kind of a big deal there, for some reason. :P )

We decided to spend most of the day in DC, and go to some of the museums along the mall. Our original plan was to hit the botanic gardens and the natural history museum.

The Smithsonian Castle is pretty much my favorite building ever, by the way.

It's just SO PRETTY, okay.

The plaque tells me that this is Joseph Henry.

 

But then along the way, heading towards the gardens we decided that maybe we could take a look inside the Museum of the American Indian. [I wanted to link to their site, but it appears a little broken at the moment.]

Okay. So. We did go here last time we were in the area, and Alex had been there before as well. And we were both severely underwhelmed. It’s very disappointing, in my opinion. There are many very interesting artifacts and displays, but very little easily-accessible information. For instance, one display had a booklet of information about the pieces, but the book was on a fixed stand almost around the corner from the display, so if you wanted to try and find one piece, you had to walk to a point where it was almost out of sight in order to read about what it was. Much of what they have displayed is meant to be aesthetically pleasing (and it often is) but then provides no context or information about the pieces individually. I believe the laudable message that they seem to be aiming for by placing everything together, regardless of whom/where/when it is from is the idea of “everyone as one people,” but it comes off more as homogenizing. Obviously, this has been a huge problem historically, that all tribes were treated as interchangeable, as identical, as if they had nothing unique or important about their individual histories, beliefs, traditions, etc. The museum, to me, seemed to reinforce that mightily. It was very disappointing, and we’d decided that we probably wouldn’t bother coming back when we were pressed for time.

But we decided to go in anyway. And it was totally worth it.

See, this year (I think through next January) they’re doing an exhibit all about horses, and what they mean to different tribes. And it was a really impressive exhibit, in terms of what they had, and the range they covered. It’s a shame that this is a temporary exhibit, because it’s my favorite thing I’ve seen there.

The poster for the exhibit. We would have bought one, if they weren't 30 freaking dollars.

Awesome tipi. *

Saddle.

Navajo horse origin myth.

Horse headpiece that looks like a bison head.

Another horse headpiece/mask. *

Beautifully decorated.

Most of this is done with porcupine quill.

Picture of a picture, but it was just a very awesome picture.

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We did go through some of the rest of the museum, though not in as much detail.

Right side.

Center

Left side.

This wall of different points is one of the examples of homogenizing that I saw… the points are displayed in a really interesting way, and it’s lovely to look at. But at a glance, there’s little information given about them. It’s just a pretty wall-hanging of “look at all the arrowheads!” (Lots of these are not arrowheads.) They do have some computers nearby that you can supposedly use to “interactively search” for more information, but both times I’ve been there, the computers weren’t working (or were so slow that I gave up after looking up one or two things.) So, a pretty display that has some amazing individual pieces, but it’s not a very good for a museum.

I somehow doubt this is historically accurate...

Bearclaw necklace. *

And another display with frustratingly little information… things seemed to be categorized by type of animal? So all the birds were together, and all the fish were together, and all the snakes… but still lacking any relevant context. Still had a few neat things, though:

Turquoise bobcat. *

Scorpion basket! I want one! *

The silver and turquoise bit with the horses is awesome,
but I also dig the crazy crab and the puffin. *

I wish a picture of this without flash would have come out, to show off the mother-of-pearl inlay.
In the eyes of these masks, it looks like reflective animal eyes. *

And that’s the end of what we saw in the museum. I’m breaking this day up into two parts, because otherwise it’ll be even more horribly image-heavy. So the rest of our time in DC will be in the next post.

* These pictures were taken with Alex's camera.