Deinstalling a Legacy Exhibit: Practical Advice and Lessons Learned from the Deinstallation of the North American Indian Cultures Hall at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reckoning with Legacy Exhibits, Data, and Collections" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In June 2023, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) closed its North American Indian Cultures Hall (NAICH), a legacy exhibit from the 1970s. In doing so, museum staff hoped to heal the harm caused by racist stereotypes perpetuated in the exhibit, and to repair broken relationships with Indigenous communities. When the doors to this legacy exhibit closed to the public, the work behind the scenes began for DMNS Anthropology Collections staff.

Understanding the significance of the work ahead, the DMNS Anthropology Collections team set out to deinstall, rehouse, and care for belongings from NAICH collaboratively and ethically. This approach to deinstallation quickly began to inform all areas of collections management.

With many institutions closing legacy exhibits, this paper seeks to provide practical steps for developing and implementing policies and procedures that put cultural care practices not only at the center of deinstallation, but at the center of collections management. From collaborative consultations to the spiritual care of belongings to the integration of indigenous knowledge into collections data, staff from the DMNS Anthropology Collections team will share the steps they took to integrate cultural care practices, lessons learned, and how they can be applied to other institutions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reckoning with Legacy Exhibits, Data, and Collections   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52160