2015 ATALM Museum Summit: Building Relationships of Mutual Respect

In this panel, Jim Enote, Director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center; Landis Smith, independen/consultant conservator based at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture; Cynthia Chavez Lamar, Asistant Director for Collections at NMAI; Kelly McHugh, Conservator at NMAI; and Brian Vallo, Director of the Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) at the School for Advanced Research (SAR), share their experience on the work they have been conducting on developing guidelines for the collaborative management and conservation of Native collections. The panelists provide first principles of collaboration and discuss ways in which museums should deal with the issues of access, circulation, and ownership of Indigenous collections, as well as the importance of working collaboratively for restoring the Indigenous meaning of objects in museums. This panel was part of the Museum Summit during the pre-conference activities for the 2015 ATALM annual conference in Washington, DC on September 9, 2015.