NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s American Museum of Natural History is closing two halls featuring Native American objects starting Saturday, acknowledging the exhibits are “severely outdated” and contain culturally sensitive items.
The mammoth complex across from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is the latest U.S. institution to cover up or remove Native American exhibits to comply with recently revamped federal regulations dealing with the display of Indigenous human remains and cultural items.
The museum said in October that it would pull all human remains from public display, with the aim of eventually repatriating as much as it could to Native American tribes and other rightful owners.
Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, said in a letter to staff Friday that the latest move reflects the “growing urgency” among museums to change their relationships with tribes and how they exhibit Indigenous cultures.
“The halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” he wrote. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”
Earlier this month, Chicago’s Field Museum covered several displays containing Native American items. Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has said it would remove all Native American funerary items from its exhibits. The Cleveland Museum of Art is another institution that has taken similar steps.
Shannon O’Loughlin, head of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a national group that has long called for museums to comply with the federal requirements, welcomed such developments but said the true test is what ultimately becomes of the removed items.
“Covering displays or taking things down isn’t the goal,” she said. “It’s about repatriation — returning objects back to tribes. So this is just one part of a much bigger process.”
Todd Mesek, a…
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