ABSTRACT
A deeply subjective narrative about the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian by NMAI curator Paul Chaat Smith, from the museum’s origins in the turbulent 1970s, to its founding in the late 1980s, to the construction of its museums in New York and Washington, DC. Smith argues that “a psychic instability exists at the heart of the American project,” based on the tension caused by the absence and presence of Indians in American life. The exhibition “Americans,” which opened in January 2018, explores this contradiction through a grand assemblage of 300 objects and images of all manner of representations of Indians created by Americans from before the founding of the United States to the present. These included an actual Tomahawk missile, a classic Indian motorcycle from the 1940s, photographs of Elvis Presley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jimmy Hoffa in headdresses, Indian imagery in advertisements for every product you can think of, sports teams named Warriors, Redskins, and Seminoles. This wallpaper of American life was on display to connect visitors emotionally to the reality that their entire lives have been surrounded by (imaginary and fictional) Indians.
