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Poetic Justice in a Museum's Location and DesignThe myriad windows lending an air of transparency to the new National Museum of the American Indian do more than link the natural world outside with the man-made interior, as they were designed to do.
They make a statement by looking outward from the foot of the U.S. Capitol onto a prime piece of real estate on the Mall and in American memory. The museum's founding director, W. Richard West Jr. -- a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma -- calls it poetic justice.
For centuries, delegations of native peoples came to Washington, posing for photographs on the White House steps and meeting with presidents and members of Congress to plead their case. As of Sept. 21, they can be heard in their own voices and through the museum's 8,000 objects in a place that is second to none in location and symbolism.
The $199 million museum is intended to be not only a place of remembrance, but of reconciliation. The loss -- through conquest, disease and displacement -- of so many diverse peoples and cultures is a part of its story, but not one dwelled upon. Emphasized, instead, will be survival and persistence and the contributions of contemporary native life.
"The story of the Western Hemisphere is not just a native story but the story of all of us," said Bruce Bernstein, the museum's assistant director for cultural r
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September 10, 2004 | Viewed 32,439 time(s)
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