Heard’s new exhibit adds voices to stories

PHOENIX, Ariz. – After four years of planning, construction and field interviews, the Heard Museum in Phoenix has recast and enlarged its main exhibit area, adding contemporary artwork and audios of interviews with American Indians.

The $7.6 million remounting at the 75-year-old museum of American Indian culture has retained some old favorites, such as a 350-piece collection of colorful Hopi kachina dolls.

But much of the exhibit is new, including two striking murals, a garden of native plants, a 35-minute documentary film and interactive touch-screen stations with audio clips, online scrapbooks, maps and timelines.

“Home: Native People in the Southwest” displays about 2,000 objects in 21,000 square feet, nearly twice the former space.

“One of the primary objectives was to use native voices,” said Janet Cantley of Phoenix, exhibit consultant on the project.

“A criticism we had heard from our Native American advisers was, ‘You have so many nice things, but there are so many stories to go along with them.’ That was our objective: to listen to those stories and tell them.”

To that end, an oral historian and other staff interviewed members of more than two dozen tribes in Arizona and New Mexico, including Apache, Hopi, Navajo, Southern Paiute and Pueblo. Their recollections and comments on culture, such as the uses of cradleboards, saddlebags and other objects, are installed on touch-screen stations.

Another criticism of the original installation, Cantley said, was that contemporary life was not represented.

“The exhibits stopped in the mid-20th century,” she said. “So, you could visit the exhibits and think Native American culture was a thing of the past.”

In the new galleries, contemporary pieces are grouped with earlier ones to show how traditions inspire new works.