Museum rangers redirect visitors on the first day of the closure of the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Native Exhibit Halls at the American Museum of Natural History, January 27, 2024, in New York. ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
On this Friday, January 26, children from Washington Heights, north of Harlem, are enthusiastic about the galleries dedicated to the Indians of the Great Plains and Appalachia at the American Museum of Natural History and fill out the questionnaires distributed by their teacher. What they don’t know is that they are the last to admire them. The next day, these galleries will be closed to the public, without notice, as the museum curator, Sean Decatur, announced in a letter to staff. “Starting this Saturday, we will close two rooms dedicated to the indigenous cultures of North America: the Eastern Forests and the Great Plains. »
The decision follows the implementation in early 2024 by the Biden administration of a 1990 law signed by President George Bush Sr. (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, in French graves of native Americans”), giving Native Americans a right of inspection over the works of their ancestors. “The law recognizes the rights of lineal descendants, Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations to Native American human remains, grave goods, sacred objects, and cultural heritage items.”, specifies the text published by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which forces museums to act after years of procrastination. As Mr. Decatur points out, “both rooms display artifacts which, under the new regulations [fédéraux], may require consent to be exposed”.
Disrespectful Galleries
Added to this is another reason, perhaps the most profound: the galleries, inaugurated in 1966 and 1967, with their outdated air, are at best from another time, at worst disrespectful. “Because these exhibits are also seriously outdated, we decided (…) to close the rooms »explains the curator, who continues: “The rooms we are closing are vestiges of a time when museums like ours did not respect the values, perspectives and even the shared humanity of Indigenous peoples. Actions that may seem sudden to some may seem long overdue to others. » The law only concerns Native Americans. Thus, the exhibitions devoted to other so-called first peoples are not closed at the Natural History Museum, except for one on Hawaii, a federal American state.
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This sudden decision created a shock. There are in reality two subjects: that proper of the Museum of Natural History, founded in the 19th century on the outskirts of Central Park, and very difficult to accept what it is, with aged exhibitions, which have made its history, but which he was unable to renovate over time. As an ethnology museum and not an art museum, it has found itself more vulnerable to accusations of colonialism, especially since it also holds the human remains of 2,200 Native Americans, according to the number of New York Times.
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2024-02-17 05:00:12
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