Dear Nina,
Have you spoken with the staff of the
Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian?
I worked as their architectural consultant in
developing the Master Facilities Program for their completed Suitland Cultural
Resources Center (CRC) and their -- now under construction -- Mall
Museum. The topic of your thesis was central to that planning
process. Essentially, the construct of "public" and "non-public" museum
space didn't work for their newly forming institution. The CRC's program,
building design and operating policies were developed to not only accommodate
but actually welcome visitors to this facility for collections housing
and related staff work areas. The program provided for ceremonies
indoors and outdoors, including those which then-typical Smithsonian
practice might have precluded or made difficult -- involving smoke,
ceremonial feeding of objects, artists working with artifacts, visitors
working simultaneously with items from various collections -- artifacts, books,
films, recordings etc. It was also recognized that not all of the
museum's constituents would come to DC or Suitland, Maryland, and that
the museum would need to support substantial offsite interaction,
electronic and physical, from their base at the CRC.
One of the NMAI planning activities whose
documentation you might look at was a symposium regarding Traditional
Collections Care held at the museum's inherited Bronx collections facility -- I
believe in 1992. That discussion and a related survey of tribal
museums conducted by James Nason of the University of
Washington, contributed to the museum's development of collections
housing, care and access approach. The
Smithsonian should have written transcripts of those meetings and
various related reports -- you may have to go there to see them. Debra
Nauta-Rodriguez, their architect responsible for managing the design and
construction of the CRC, should be able to direct you to the right
sources.
Good luck on your research! Please contact me
offline if there are specific questions I might answer.
Ann Trowbridge
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