Preserving the History of the Colorado Plateau

Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau gallery's opening weekend included a gathering of people from all ten tribes represented. Image courtesy of the Northern Arizona Museum. — Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau gallery’s opening weekend included a gathering of people from all ten tribes represented. Image courtesy of the Northern Arizona Museum.

Founded in 1928, the Museum of Northern Arizona collects, preserves, and interprets the natural and cultural history of the Colorado Plateau. In addition to serving the local, rural community, the museum attracts many visitors traveling through the region on their way to and from the Grand Canyon. As a collecting institution, the Museum of Northern Arizona plays an important role in keeping local collections local, as it holds many items unearthed in the state. And the Museum of Northern Arizona has a long history of NEH funding. While early grants helped it create an internship program and supported permanent anthropology exhibits, more recent grants have helped the museum preserve its cultural collections and create an updated and more welcoming exhibition space.

The Easton Collection Center is a LEED Platinum certified building that cares for tribal and cultural objects curated by the museum. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

The museum plays an important role in keeping local collections local, as it holds many items unearthed in the state. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Recent NEH grants have helped the museum preserve its cultural collections and create an updated and more welcoming exhibition space. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Beginning with a preservation assistance grant in 2002 that helped the museum develop a long-term conservation plan, the Museum of Northern Arizona has leveraged NEH funding to preserve its collections. Among other projects, NEH funding has helped the museum preserve collections of Katsina dolls and prehistoric ceramic vessels. It has also helped the museum properly store a unique collection of Southwest silver and a collection of film negatives that document early research on the Colorado Plateau as well as the 84-year-old Heritage Program Festival. Both of these collections, which document the artistic work of local Indigenous tribes, are used by tribal members interested in understanding earlier artistic techniques and in making their own art. Two major grants for compactor shelving and supplies helped the museum move its ethnology and archive to its new, state-of-the-art collection center. A more recent grant has helped the museum safely store more than 2,000 works of fine art on paper. Many of these works were created by Native American artists, and a new web portal is making that art more accessible.

And NEH funding has helped ensure that these collections are seen by a broader public. With a challenge grant, which helped it raise an additional $300,000, the Museum of Northern Arizona was able to make major infrastructure improvements to one of its most meaningful gallery spaces, necessary to updating an ethnographic exhibition originally funded by the NEH in 1980. With NEH funding, the museum upgraded its electrical and HVAC systems, removed asbestos and installed new insulation, flooring, walls, and lighting. Today, the gallery houses “Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau,” an exhibition designed in collaboration with 42 tribal consultants that exposes visitors to Indigenous cultures and conveys a particularly important message: “we’re still here.”