The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York closed two halls and covered seven other display cases that featured “severely outdated ” exhibits of Native American cultural items in late January.
More than half a dozen other major museums recently removed or covered up Native American items on display’. These actions are the most visible responses to major revisions to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which went into effect in mid-January.
Despite NAGPRA’s 1990 passage, institutions like the AMNH have continued to use considerable resources—including anthropology departments, storage facilities, government funding, and tax-deductible contributions—to collect, preserve, research, display, and expand collections of these items.
“There are hundreds of thousands of objects, thousands of collections, and thousands of private collectors,” Erin Thompson, a professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently told ARTnews.
“It has taken hundreds of years to form these collections. It’s not going to be quickly resolved.”
