Shelburne Museum announced a new initiative on Monday that will feature Indigenous art from more than 80 tribes and bands across North America.
The installation will be housed in a new $12.6 million building designed by Sir David Adjaye, the award-winning architect behind the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2017 for his service to architecture.
The 9,750-square-foot building, which will be called the Perry Center for Native American Art, is being “designed to support the culturally appropriate interpretation and care of Indigenous material culture,” according to a press release issued by the Shelburne Museum.
Tom Denenberg, the museum’s director and CEO, said the architectural partners working on the project are “particularly adept at the conversation about being a steward of somebody else’s culture, somebody else’s history and heritage.”
Adjaye said his team hoped not only to enhance the Shelburne Museum’s educational mission, “but also to amplify and empower the Indigenous communities represented by the collection and to reconceptualize the role of a museum facility in the 21st century.”
“As the design architect for the new Perry Center, we intend to cultivate opportunities for transformation, storytelling and cross-cultural dialogue, ensuring the Perry Center contributes to the unique eclecticism and mission of Shelburne Museum,” he said.
The Perry Center is named for Tony Perry, an Indigenous art enthusiast of European descent who grew up in Vermont and amassed a large collection of Indigenous art pieces, which his family donated to the museum after his death, the museum said in the press release.
According to Denenberg, Perry took a particular interest in Indigenous embroidery, Southwestern pottery and Indigenous art related to child rearing, acquiring his collection at auctions and through dealers around the country.
When asked why the center will be named for Perry, rather than for an Indigenous artist or cultural figure, Denenberg said the name is intended to honor Perry’s gift.
“The building has been designed to be extremely respectful of Indigenous perspectives, even having spaces where an Indigenous person can come and be with an item from the collection from their tribes,” Denenberg said. “Those sorts of permeable spaces are going to be very important, and my sense is that is going to be more important than the name on the building.”
Beverly Little Thunder — a Lakota elder, women’s activist, member of the Standing Rock Lakota Band from North Dakota and long-time Vermont resident — disagrees.
“If they truly wanted to honor the people whose art they were displaying, they would find a way to give it a different name,” she said. “I think it’s kind of keeping in line with what settlers have done all along.”
Denenberg emphasized the importance of creating an appropriate home for the pieces of art that the center will display.
“It would be inappropriate to put (the collection) in a rehabilitated barn,” he said. “It would be inappropriate to put it in a colonial revival gallery structure, so it needed its own space.”
According to Denenberg, conversations with Indigenous people have helped to steer the project and shaped the museum’s priorities for the building.
“A number of the tribes have a perspective or a belief that the items actually have their own life,” Denenberg said. “They’re living collections, and so that has a very specific kind of set of expectations and stewardship requirements (that we) intend to respect.”
While some critics point out the colonial roots that many western museums indulge by displaying and profiting from art created by people who experienced colonization, Denenberg said the collection at the Perry Center was “acquired ethically.”
“Almost all of the material in the collection was designed to be traded (or sold) to other cultures,” Denenberg said.
Denenberg said most pieces in the collection were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries during what is often referred to as the Reservation Era. At that time, many Indigenous people responded to the violence of European colonization by creating art and objects designed to aid Indigenous survival within a colonial economy by catering to non-Native consumers.
“Without a doubt, there is a very sad history,” Denenberg said. “That’s something we’re confronting transparently.”
According to Denenberg, the museum’s Indigenous art collection has been inventoried in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which facilitates the repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural inheritance. Federal agencies and museums, universities, state agencies, local governments and any institution that receives federal funds must comply with this act.
“Shelburne Museum has approached this project with an abiding awareness of the responsibility inherent in caring for a collection that represents living cultures. From the outset, partnerships with source communities have been a priority and focus of this initiative,” Denenberg said in the press release.
The project has involved collaboration with Two Row Architect, an Indigenous-owned architecture firm, which Denenberg said has organized a series of listening circles through which members of the tribes represented in the collection can be involved in the museum’s process.
According to the Shelburne Museum, other steps taken by the museum to “ensure institutional cultural competency” include the creation of a committee made up of Indigenous Tribal members, scholars, curators and culture bearers, participation in a cultural competency seminar, engagement with Indigenous consultants on building projects and the addition of an associate curator of Native American art, who joined Shelburne Museum in January. The new curator, Victoria Sunnergren, who is not Indigenous, is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Delaware with a focus on Indigenous art.
“I think that there are Indigenous art curators they could have found,” said Little Thunder, “And I question why they didn’t put that effort into it.”
The Shelburne Museum said in the press release that it hopes the Perry Center “will serve as a welcoming space for Tribal members and scholars to study and engage with the collection and will reimagine the museum experience for all visitors including the local community, schoolchildren and tourists.”
Little Thunder said she feels the exhibit could be an opportunity to create a meaningful tribute to Indigenous people across North America, if engaged with responsibly.
“The question I’m asking,” Little Thunder said, “is (if the Perry Center is being created) to truly honor the Native people and provide education for the public at large? Or is it being done to glorify the person who returned (the Indigenous art) to assuage their guilt?”
