LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Autry National Center’s lobby now features an exquisite installation highlighting notable objects from the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection, representing Indigenous cultures from Alaska to Brazil. Some of the items displayed were made by prominent artists, such as Maria Martinez, who is credited with creating the innovative blackware ceramic style. Other items, such as a tobacco pipe given by Sitting Bull to Buffalo Bill, belonged to known historical figures. The thirty-one objects range from an ancient basket dating back to 500 BC to a contemporary ceramic from 2007.

“The Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection is one of America’s premier collections of Native American art and artifacts. It has long been our goal to display this remarkable collection at the Autry in Griffith Park so that the community has the opportunity to see and experience firsthand the history of America’s Indigenous peoples. Most importantly, the Autry is visited by over 50,000 LAUSD students every year who now can see with their own eyes these historical and remarkable pieces,” commented Daniel Finley, President and CEO of the Autry National Center.

The 11-feet-tall by 9-feet-wide case is prominently positioned at the entrance to the Autry, next to the Visitor Services Desk. The first set of artifacts encountered by visitors, it features an open-collections-style presentation allowing the objects to be seen from various angles, including from below. Other objects include intricate baskets, decorative ceramics, beaded moccasins, elaborate cradleboards, various masks, and folk art.

“This assemblage represents some of the finest pieces in the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection. It also demonstrates the collection’s enormous depth and breadth of Indigenous material culture. Ranging from across the Americas, it is genuinely hemispheric in scope,” said Steven Karr, Director and Ahmanson Curator, Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

Highlights include (by date):

• Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) basket, 500 BC–AD 500. Recovered from a dry cave in southern Utah, this 1,500- to 2,500-year-old basket remains in excellent condition.

• Ceramic pre-Columbian female figure from Nayarit, Mexico, circa 100 BC–AD 250, from the Protoclassic period

• French or American tomahawk pipe used by the Crow, early 1800s

• Catlinite pipe bowl used by Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, 1876–1881. Given by Sitting Bull to Buffalo Bill

• Cree velvet cradleboard, circa 1900

• Haida basket hat with ten rings belonging to a high-ranking member of the tribe, circa 1907

• Kiowa deerskin moccasins, circa 1910

• Jar by Maria Martinez (1881–1980, San Ildefonso Pueblo), 1920–1925. Martinez is often credited with creating the innovative blackware ceramic style.

• Headdress from the Amazonian tribe Wayana Aparai (Brazil), 1970s–1980s

• Raven spirit mask by Vitesha (Yu’pik), circa 1988

• Carved Inupiaq ivory or bone double-hoop miniature spirit mask with attached baleen, feathers, and horse hair, made by John Kokuluk of King Island, Alaska, 1991

• Chochiti Pueblo / San Felipe Pueblo ceramic storyteller crawling with twenty-two children, made by Dena Suina, 1991–2007. Each child is engaged in a unique activity, ranging from reading to playing the drums.