The federal government overhauled the rules regarding native cultural items in museums this past Friday, requiring proprietors to “obtain free, prior and informed consent” from a particular tribe before exhibiting objects that came from them. As a result, museums across the country have been adjusting to the new regulations, with curators trying to manage how staffing, budget, and inventory matters will be affected.
This new ruling is part of an effort to reform rules that were originally established in the 90s; they aim to accelerate the repatriation of indigenous items and remains, a process that tribal officials and repatriation advocates have been trying to initiate for some time- and have criticized the government and art proprietors for not moving along fast enough.
The Field Museum in Chicago, which has one of the largest collections of Native culture, was founded in 1894 after the World’s Columbian Exposition. It was originally a repository for items presented at the fair. Field was one of the first places to update its collection based on the new rule, covering up several display cases that featured Native American cultural items. Other museums are left to decide if they are going to leave these indigenous cultural pieces on display and risk violating these federal regulations or go forward with what could be considered a long process of requesting tribal permission.
“Pending consultation with the represented communities, we have covered all cases that we believe contain cultural items that could be subject to these regulations,” the Field Museum claimed in the announcement they released on their website, also noting that they do not exhibit human remains.
This decision applies to display cases in the halls dedicated to the ancient Americas; the exhibition focus is on civilizations in the Western Hemisphere going back 13,000 years. It’s not yet clear which items have been obscured and which tribes the museum will consult with over their works.
With these new federal regulations, many practices that were responsible for delaying returns of indigenous art are no longer permitted- and institutions can no longer label human remains or objects as “culturally unidentifiable,” which is one way that made it more challenging for tribes to reclaim their pieces.
The changes being enacted are representative of a developing urgency around the repatriation of Native American artworks, which has been initiated, in part, by a broader effort at museums and universities to correct historical exploitations; holding these cultural items is linked to a period in which they were obtained via bloodshed graverobbing.
However, other major institutions that exhibit indigenous pieces, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, have yet to announce how their collections and displays will be altered.
