Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
September 26, 2009 – 8:20pm
60 degrees Fahrenheit
Direct Digital Capture: Camera – Nikon D3X with 14 mm lens
Exposure time: 20 seconds @ f11 ISO 100
All external lighting was provided by multiple hand-held electronic
flash units and flashlights operated by approximately 815 people.
Produced & Sponsored by:
- Students, Faculty, Staff & Friends of the RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences Rochester Institute of Technology
- National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution
- Nikon Inc, USA
- Xerox Corporation
- Frank Cost, 2009 interim dean College of Imaging Arts and Sciences
- The RIT Innovation Center
- National Technical Institute for the Deaf
About the 2009 Subject:
The National Museum of the American Indian is the sixteenth museum of the Smithsonian Institution. It is the first national museum dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of Native Americans. Established by an act of Congress in 1989, the museum works in collaboration with the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere to protect and foster their cultures by reaffirming traditions and beliefs, encouraging contemporary artistic expression, and empowering the Indian voice.
The museum’s extensive collections, assembled largely by George Gustav Heye (1874–1957), encompass a vast range of cultural material—including more that 800,000 works of extraordinary aesthetic, religious, and historical significance, as well as articles produced for everyday, utilitarian use. The collections span all major culture areas of the Americas, representing virtually all tribes of the United States, most of those of Canada, and a significant number of cultures from Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. Chronologically, the collections include artifacts from Paleo-Indian to contemporary arts and crafts. The museum’s holdings also include film and audiovisual collections, paper archives, and a photography archive of more than 300,000 images depicting both historic and contemporary Native American life.
The National Museum of the American Indian comprises three facilities, each designed following consultations between museum staff and Native peoples. In all of its activities, the National Museum of the American Indian acknowledges the diversity of cultures and the continuity of cultural knowledge among indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and Hawai’i, incorporating Native methodologies for the handling, documentation, care, and presentation of collections. NMAI actively strives to find new approaches to the study and representation of the history, materials, and cultures of Native peoples.