BIA to close Sioux Indian Museum? REALLY bad idea!

[eridani]

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/01/10/news/top/news01a.txt

Losing the Sioux Indian Museum's collection of Indian photos, artifacts and contemporary art to the public market or burying it in Washington, D.C., would be a sin that only the Pope's mother could absolve, according to Brother Simon, the curator of collections at Red Cloud Heritage Center near Pine Ridge.

"The museum has been undersold and under-appreciated for a long time," Simon said.

The museum has a fantastic collection of early contemporary American Indian art, he said. It has sculpture, beadwork, quill work and paintings.

The collection also contains two famous winter count drawings on buffalo hides, Simon said.

"It is a collection that has been gathered over the last 30 to 40 years," Simon said. It's a good overall collection that museums in larger cities would welcome, he said.

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Bureau of Indian Affairs plans to stop funding the Sioux Indian Museum, housed in The Journey Museum, and American Indian museums in Browning, Mont., and Anadarko, Okla., in October 2007.

The Sioux Indian Museum traces its origins to photographer and trader John E. Anderson, who began photographing Indian life on Rosebud Indian Reservation in the late 1880s. He brought his collection of photos and artifacts to Rapid City in 1939, and they were displayed in the museum at Halley Park. The BIA bought the collection in 1941.

The BIA transferred the operation of the three museums to the Arts and Crafts Board in 1954 when it was facing budget problems, according to Paulette Montileaux, curator of the Sioux Indian Museum. The museum collections are owned by the Department of Interior.

The Sioux Indian Museum has an annual budget of about $140,000 to $150,000, Montileaux said. The budget sustains a staff of two, provides an operating and collection maintenance budget and supports special exhibitions, she said. The Journey Museum receives $1,000 per month to house the collection.

Montileaux, The Journey's director Ray Summers and Rapid City officials were notified in August that President Bush's budget for Fiscal Year 2008 calls for the elimination of the funds for the three museums.

[cleofus1]

1. the bia used to just suck

now it's broke and it sucks