McClung Museum receives grant to aid in launching Native American mound exhibit

CAITLIN MULQUEEN Staff Writer

The McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture received a grant of $145,000 from the Terra Foundation for American Art in support of the upcoming exhibition: “A Sense of Indigenous Place: Native American Voices and the Mound at University of Tennessee.”

The exhibition is co-curated with Native artists of four Native Nations as well as curator in McClung Museum, Cat Shteynberg, and associate professor in English Lisa King.

The project began after King attended a conference in Philadelphia and came back to Rocky Top with an idea.

“I had seen a small exhibition on mounds there and it ended with a video on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the mound (on campus),” King said. “I thought that it’s wild — I came all the way to Pennsylvania only to see the story of where I live. So that really got me thinking.”

The epiphany came in the fall of 2019, just after professor Claudio Gómez had been inaugurated as the new director of McClung. King pitched the idea to Gómez and Shteynberg.

Shteynberg, King and others working on the exhibition began reaching out to Native

Nations that have a historic connection to Knox County, hearing back from four: Cherokee Nation, Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation and Muscogee Nation.

Shteynberg explained the co-curation plan strayed from the norm in museums, especially academic museums, citing the obsession in academics with the primacy put on the individual scholar.

King explained a sense of responsibility to educate on the matter.

“The project, in its essence, was born by thinking through UT’s responsibilities to Indigenous peoples, thinking about doing better with education on Indigenous cities around campus and thinking about how McClung can be a major supporter of that … We have to recognize that the money disbursed to revitalize UT came from expropriated Indigenous land,” King said in reference to the Morrill Land-Grants act of 1862.

The act took part in resuscitating UT in the aftermath of the Civil War, with much of the land that the university sold belonging to Indigenous people across the United States. Ultimately, UT was built on Cherokee land.

“I can’t dictate anyone’s response,” Shteynburg said. “But what I really hope is that we all understand that we work, we play, we study and we live on land that has a strong, strong connection, a spiritual connection, a homeland connection for so many different Native Nations and a lot of this land was taken away from them and it’s important to be aware of that.”

The exhibition will feature contemporary work done by Native artists about mounds. There will also be Native languages translating parts of the explanatory texts in the space, video interviews with the co-curators and a website will be created alongside the exhibition that will remain as an educational resource beyond the two years that the exhibit will be on display in McClung Museum.

“I think this can serve both native and non-native students. We want native students to feel welcome and recognized on campus — seen and supported,” King said. King explained the mound as a central point in drawing our attention to the university’s indigenous history.

“It’s not meant to guilt people or anything like that. It’s meant to call attention to something that needs it. An education means understanding your connection to the world and your connection to histories,” King said. “If you come to UT this is part of your history whether you’re Native or not.”