Tipi of the Great Plains Exhibition

FAIN: GI-50091-09

Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052)
Nancy Rosoff (Project Director: August 2008 to June 2012)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition and a catalog on the Plains Indian tipi, highlighting its historical role in Plains cultures and its continued importance as a symbol of identity.

The Brooklyn Museum seeks $400,000 to support the exhibition, The Tipi of the Great Plains, a touring project that will premiere at the Brooklyn Museum in September 2010. The project received planning support from the Endowment and draws on input from a wide range of Native American and non-Native scholars. The exhibition will offer new and informative perspectives on this icon of the American cultural landscape by examining this complex cultural tradition that underlies Plains tribal identity. The exhibition will draw from Brooklyn Museum's significant holdings of Plains material, supplemented by loans and four specially-commissioned full-scale tipis, one of which may be entered by all visitors. The exhibition catalogue will be the first major contribution to the general literature of tipis in more than four decades.