Museum exhibits Meetings
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Tours
Education
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Conferences
■ NEW EXHIBITS INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
National Museum of the American Indian
Smithsonian Institution, National Mall, Washington, D.C.—The much anticipated grand opening of the new museum includes opening ceremonies, the Native Nations procession, a sixday festival, exhibitions, and other events. With its Native-designed architecture, exhibitions, and landscaping, the 250,000-square-foot museum is a one-of-a-kind cultural institution dedicated to the cultures, histories, languages, and artifacts of American Indians. Showcasing objects that represent a 10,000-year time span, the opening exhibitions capture the vast diversity of the Indians of the Americas told from their own perspective. The spectacular First Americans Festival will feature more than 300 of the most talented Native performers representing more than 50 tribes and Native communities. (202) 357-3164, www.AmericanIndian.si.edu (Opening September 21)
NPS
University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Eugene, Ore.—Celebrate the museum’s grand re-opening when the entire exhibition hall will be transformed into a new exhibit, “Oregon–Where Past is Present.” Based on the latest archaeological research, this new exhibit uses thousands of artifacts dating as far back as 15,000 years ago, as well as reconstructions and interactive displays to tell the story of Oregon’s cultural, natural, and geological history. (541) 346-3024, http://natural-history.uoregon.edu (Opening October 8) american archaeology
Events
Festivals
Pier 21 Museum
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada—The new traveling exhibition “France/New France: From Acadia to Louisiana” marks the 400th anniversary of French settlement in North America, beginning with the first 16th-century settlements. The exhibit examines the role of the First Nations and the motives of French monarchs for colonizing and claiming lands in the New World and those of the French colonists who left their homeland to emigrate to a colony with an uncertain future. (902) 425-7770, www.pier21.ca (Through January 2, 2005) Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Ill.—The major new exhibition “Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South” explores the art, ritual, ceremonial places, and settlements of the ancient peoples who lived in the central part of the U.S. between 5000 B.C. and A.D. 1600. The exhibit includes some 300 masterworks of stone, ceramic, wood, shell, and copper. (312) 443-3600, www.artic.edu (November 20 through January 30, 2005)
Institute of Texan Cultures
University of Texas, San Antonio, Tex.—“Sacred Smoke: Tobacco Pipes and the Indians of the Americas,” featuring American Indian pipes from the Red McCombs Collection, offers an anthropological perspective on the use of pipes in American Indian rituals. All tribes used tobacco in many religious rituals involving prayer, healing, and sealing of contracts and treaties. Because tobacco has played such an important role in American Indian beliefs, the pipe is considered a power ful ritual object. Pipes were often carved in the image of animals to assist in spiritual vision quests. (210) 458-2330, www.texancultures.utsa.edu (New permanent exhibit)
Ocmulgee Indian Celebration September 18–19, Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, Ga. Named one of the top 20 events in the Southeast, this year’s celebration features traditional arts, crafts, technology demonstrations, Native storytelling, dance, and music. (478) 752-8257, www.nps.gov/ocmu 5
