Native North America Gallery opens at the Penn Museum

The newly renovated Native North America Gallery at the Penn Museum, created in partnership with eight Indigenous consulting curators explores the political, religious, linguistic, and artistic self-determination of Native peoples across the United States.

Unveiled during a press preview ahead of the public opening celebration on Nov. 22, the new gallery is located on the Museum’s main level adjacent to the Sphinx Gallery, and features more than 250 archaeological, historic, and contemporary items from the Museum’s North American collections.

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“Our work with Native peoples spans more than a century and opening the new Native North America Gallery marks a new chapter in that ongoing collaboration,” says Christopher Woods, the Williams Director of the Penn Museum and Avalon Professor of the Humanities in the School of Arts & Sciences. “By centering Indigenous perspectives, we invite meaningful moments of reflection around American history. Native-led stories offer nuance and complexity to the nation’s story as it approaches its 250th year.”

The 2,000-square-foot multisensory Gallery’s purposeful design offers an immersive visitor experience, with first-person videos, interactive stations where visitors can try their hands at traditional weaving techniques, and the inclusion of Native languages throughout the interpretive text.

At the entrance of the new Gallery, an empty case signals recognition of repatriation and honors Native views about which items are appropriate for display in museums, says Joseph Aguilar, Tribal Historic Preservation Office board member, San Ildefonso Pueblo, and consulting curator of the Native North America Gallery.

“The inclusion of an empty display case is a deliberate intervention—not an act of censorship,” says Aguilar, a Penn alumnus. “It serves as a thoughtful prompt for visitors to reflect on the fraught relationship between museums and Indigenous communities. In its absence, the object becomes an act of Indigenous sovereignty—an assertion of agency over the stewardship and future of cultural heritage.”

Aguilar was one of eight consulting curators for the Native North American Gallery to work alongside the Penn Museum’s co-curators, Lucy Fowler Williams and Megan C. Kassabaum.

“Following the lead of eight insightful Native American consulting curators, this beautiful exhibition introduces archaeology, traditional knowledge, nuanced histories, and art from four distinct regions of the United States,” says Fowler Williams, associate curator-in-charge and Sabloff Keeper of the North American Section. She says the project underscores the Museum’s ongoing work to illuminate the Native American experience and the collections from Native homelands. “Working closely with our Native colleagues over a two-year period has been an honor. Their contributions bring new light and life to our collections and help visitors understand some of the unique and enduring Native American ideas and perspectives.”

The Native North America Gallery showcases first-person outlooks from four areas with especially strong representation in the Penn Museum’s collections:

Northeast: Longevity of Lënapehòkink honors the Lenape as the first people of the Delaware Valley, illustrating their vibrant river communities and the broken promises that led to their forced removal.

Southeast: Persistent Places and Traditions recognizes Eastern Band Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek) peoples of the rivers and woodlands of the American South, and highlights under-recognized Indigenous technologies in engineering, agriculture, and art.

Southwest: Connecting with a Sacred Landscape accentuates the resilience of Pueblo peoples in the arid Southwest, who thrived for centuries in communal settings such as Mesa Verde.

Northwest: Stewardship around the Gulf of Alaska celebrates the Alutiiq and Tlingit peoples, who have upheld traditions anchored in stewardship of the abundant natural resources in the Gulf of Alaska and the Southeast islands.

The oldest items on view inside the Native North America Gallery are among the most ancient in the Penn Museum’s collections—projectile points dating back to 9,500 BCE. Recovered during a 1936 expedition near Clovis, New Mexico, they were shaped into spearpoints for hunting. The newest item is “Parceled Space #2,” a woven piece specifically commissioned from Cherokee artist Brenda Mallory, whose mixed media sculptural works imply tenuous connections and repair, addressing interference and disruption in long-established systems.

Building on the 10-year success of the Museum's previous exhibition, “Native American Voices: The People-Here and Now,” Kassabaum, the Weingarten associate curator, says, “the exhibit weaves together deep histories with the recent past and contemporary experience of Native communities.” She notes that the galleries seek to demonstrate that Native people have survived extreme hardship over generations, yet their cultural practices, developed during thousands of years, endure.

Kassabaum points to the importance of the collaboration with the Indigenous team of consulting curators. “Indigenous representation in museums is a complex part of America's painful colonial history and relationships continue to evolve,” she says. “We are committed to making sure this necessary, collaborative work continues."

Read more at the Penn Museum.