National Museum of the American Indian

This afternoon, I was sitting at work at 2 pm when I realized that I had finished all my work for the week, I had already put in the necessary hours and that the office was emptying out quickly and I was the last person still thinking about patents on a Friday afternoon. I made an executive decision to leave early and spend some time to do some touristy summer stuff! Woo hoo!

I went straight to the Smithsonian to the National Museum of the American Indian which I believe is the newest museum of the Smithsonian, I had never been inside the building before. I stumbled upon a tour led by a college-aged Cherokee, and I learned about the building and how it’s a solar calendar, the symbolism of elk’s teeth on traditional dresses and that the folks who were the iron workers that built NYC’s skyscrapers were Native Americans. What a treat to not have to run by a museum exhibit and say – look some dolls/pottery/paintings/dresses! – and continue running by with kids in strollers, crying, with sticky fingers and unhappy.

(Note: I did not take this beautiful photo. )

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

2 thoughts on “National Museum of the American Indian”

  1. I was there a couple of years back. The impression I got was that the museum had too many shops. I don’t know it has been changed that or not.

    The other comment I have is about King’s memorial in Atlanta. It is really on bad shape. It is not very well kept. For a towering figure like him, a national monument in Washington DC is long over-due.

    The other point is that a Chinese sculpture college profession in China won the honor to put King’s figure together for the future monumnet through world-wide open competition.

    I don’t understand why some people here vigorously object that. One of the ridiculous reasons is that China government has poor human rights record. The other is that there are a lot of outstand Afro-American sculpturers around. Too bad, I am sure there are. But, in this case, they couldn’t win thru open competition.

    This is absolutely a reverse discrimination case out of proportion. I hope O… and other reasonable people would fare better – thru competition regardless …

Leave a Reply