The Museum is launching a multi-year project to update, restore, and conserve the historic Northwest Coast Hall and to enrich the interpretation of the gallery’s outstanding exhibits, working with Pacific Northwest Coast communities. The restoration project is expected to be completed in Spring 2021, during the celebration of the Museum’s 150th anniversary.
“We are excited to refresh and enrich the Museum’s first hall and first cultural gallery,” said Ellen V. Futter, Museum President. “We are particularly gratified to be working with First Nations communities, deepening the Museum’s collaboration with indigenous communities as we prepare to update and enliven the gallery’s exhibits and presentations.”
Later this fall, the Museum will host an interdisciplinary convening of Native and non-Native scholars, curators, artists, conservators, and others to consider exhibition design, interpretation, and approaches to conservation.
At an event to announce the project this morning, attendees—including members of the Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Tlingit communities who had traveled to New York City for the occasion—were welcomed by members of the Shinnecock Nation of eastern Long Island.
The Northwest Coast Hall Restoration project also includes a major effort by the Division of Anthropology’s Objects Conservation Laboratory to conserve more than 1,000 items from the Northwest Coast collection, one of the largest, most important collections of 19th- and early 20th-century Northwest Coast art and material culture in the world.