Creating Together: Reimagining the High Desert Museum's Exhibition on the Indigenous Columbia Plateau

FAIN: GE-264601-19

High Desert Museum (Bend, OR 97708-5035)
Dana Whitelaw (Project Director: August 2018 to October 2022)

Planning for the reinstallation of the High Desert Museum’s 4,500-square-foot By Hand Through Memory permanent exhibition.

Through this planning period, High Desert Museum staff, tribal representatives and academics will explore major themes for the reinterpretation of the Museum’s By Hand Through Memory permanent exhibition. This exhibition will highlight how Plateau Indians actively maintained their cultures, traditions and languages and navigated pressures to assimilate. Merging artifacts, traditional and contemporary artwork, ecology and Native voices, the interdisciplinary, place-based exhibition will focus audiences’ attention on stories not told elsewhere. By placing American Indians at the center of the history of the American West in the 20th century, the reinterpreted exhibition and associated programming will raise awareness of the enduring role of Native people in the Columbia Plateau and enhance understanding of the region as a shared place. Stronger relationships between cultural institutions in the region will support co-curated traveling exhibitions that will reach large audiences.