National Museum of the American Indian - U.S. Customs House

National Museum of the American Indian - U.S. Customs House

A delightful patchwork, artifact-based history of leading American Indian cultures stretching back a remarkable 10,000 years, the National Museum of the American Indian is administered remotely by Washington, D.C.’s authoritative Smithsonian Institution. Much of the collection here was assembled by New York banker and oil heir George Gustav Heye, and organized under the auspices of his foundation far uptown. The museum moved into the financial district and the U.S. Customs House (a spectacular Beaux Arts federal building fronting Bowling Green) in 1994, and made just few enough changes to the interior to make striking the contrast between the profit house and the museum of sorrow it contains. More than one million items, drawn mostly from the major North American Indian nations, are on rotating display, including Navajo textiles, Southwestern pottery, wood and stone carvings from the Pacific Northwest, and gold- and jade-works from Central and South America.