Video:The Heard Museum

Transcript:The Heard Museum

Hi. I’m Debra Krol, Communications Manager with The Heard Museum and I’m here for About.com. And, I’m going to show you what The Heard Museum is all about.

Native Phoenix Art is Features at Heard Museum

The Heard Museum came about because of the efforts of a very special couple by the name of Dwight and May Heard. May was the heiress to what we now know as the true Value Hardware fortune. Once they got to Phoenix, they fell in love immediately with the native arts and culture right in the area and they started buying art. By 1928 they had amassed more than 3,500 pieces of art and in 1929, the original museum was opened.

Heard Museum Highlights Native American History

This is the entrance to our second most popular exhibit. This is the history of the Indian Boarding Schools. Starting in the late 1800’s boys and girls were forced from their homes and shipped to distant boarding schools. Where they were told they couldn’t speak their languages, where they were issued military uniforms and made to live under military discipline. The idea was to kill the Indian to save the Man. And they were doing this because they thought by stripping the culture from these young children they could break the tribes up.

Temporary Exhibits at the Museum:

We’re in the Sandra Day O’ Connor Gallery. This is one of the seven galleries that has exhibits that change from time to time. This is a new exhibit called Native American Bolo Ties.  All about the history of Arizona’s official state neck wear.

Permanent Exhibits and Features at the Museum:

We’re in the Hopi section of the Heard Museum’s permanent exhibit. And one of the central facets of Hopi spiritual and cultural life are these dolls. They’re known as Katsina dolls. And what they are are physical representations or manifestations of the supernatural spirits who live up in The San Francisco Peaks. And there are hundreds of them, literally hundreds because there are hundreds of supernatural spirits.

This is a miniature version of an actual Navajo Hogan that has been the traditional home of the Navajo people for milennia. It is built in the traditional way, with cedar logs. You can imagine what it’s like to get up in the morning, and to greet the sunrise with corn pollen in hand and saying the morning prayers of all Navajo people say to insure themselves of a harmonious day.

Over the years The Heard Museum has grown to include more than 40,000 pieces of American Indian Art. With 11 exhibit galleries, 180,000 square feet of gallery space, an auditorium, a full service shop, a full service café, classrooms. We have room here for several events each year. And it’s truly a place of wonder and learning all about our American Indian relations.

Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the web at about.com.