Penn Museum Unveils New Native North America Gallery on November 22
In partnership with eight Indigenous consulting curators, the Penn Museum will unveil its new Native North America Gallery with a public opening celebration on Saturday, November 22. A continuation of the museum’s work with Native specialists for more than a century, it will explore the political, religious, linguistic, and artistic self-determination of Native peoples across the United States who are still thriving—despite a historic agenda to erase Indigenous identity, culture, and language. These Native-led stories will offer nuance and complexity in telling the nation’s story as it approaches its 250th year. Uplifting cultural continuity, resilience, and creativity, the Native North America Gallery will reframe Native American histories.
Through its recognition of Indigenous deep histories, including upheaval amid centuries of betrayals, the exhibition will simultaneously draw attention to today’s Indigenous ideas, technologies, and art—alongside the ongoing challenges Native peoples still face.
Through more than 250 archaeological, historic, and contemporary items from the Penn Museum’s North American collections, the 2,000 sq. ft. multisensory gallery’s design will foster an immersive visitor experience—from its first-person videos, interactive stations, color palette and motifs to including Native languages throughout the interpretive text. Following best practices in the care and conservation of the Native works, periodic rotations of the items on display will offer Museum guests a fresh look.
The oldest items on view inside the Native North America Gallery will be the most ancient in the Penn Museum’s collections—projectile points dating back to 9500 BCE. Recovered during a 1936 expedition near Clovis, New Mexico, they were carefully shaped into spear points for hunting. The newest will be “Parceled Space #2,” a woven piece specifically commissioned from Cherokee artist Brenda Mallory, whose mixed media sculptural works imply tenuous…
