Mississippian Art and NAGPRA
In late 2023 the Department of the Interior revised the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA. New regulations, effective January 2024, include duty-of-care requirements that affect how museums display certain works by Native American artists: funerary objects, collectively owned cultural patrimony, and sacred items needed for worship. Accordingly, in early 2024 the Saint Louis Art Museum removed several ancient Mississippian works from display. These are known or suspected funerary objects, based on provenance and consultation. As the Museum develops its next steps for the gallery of Mississippian art, staff seeks to work closely and collaboratively with descendent communities.
The deinstalled works include ceramic, stone, and shell sculptures. They include a mix of loans and selections from the Museum’s collection, and each is associated with the Mississippian civilization. Around the years 1000–1500, Indigenous peoples across the Midwest and Southeast developed a series of cities and distinctive art styles. The largest Mississippian city, known today as Cahokia, is located in the St. Louis metro area.
NAGPRA safeguards Indigenous burials and provides a framework for repatriation. The law seeks to reconnect Native American communities with alienated ancestors (human remains) and cultural property. NAGPRA defines and regulates specific categories of work—funerary objects, sacred items, and cultural patrimony—and uses the term cultural items to describe these categories collectively. NAGPRA applies to any institution that has received federal funds and possesses Native American–affiliated items. Many universities and museums are subject to NAGPRA, as well as some parks.
The Saint Louis Art Museum has long complied with NAGPRA. Previously, and on an ongoing basis, the Museum has reported its collection of Native American art to the federal government and to Native American governments. The Museum’s collection features roughly 1,000 works by Native American artists, with selections displayed across the galleries. The collection includes some cultural items, art made for other uses in the community, historic art for external audiences, as well as modern and contemporary Native American art. There are no Native American ancestors at the Museum.
Many of the recent changes to NAGPRA are meant to address loopholes from the original law that allowed universities, museums, and parks to avoid returning ancestors by designating them as culturally unaffiliated. The revision also enhances the framework for stewardship and repatriation of cultural items. New duty-of-care principles apply to cultural items in a museum’s collection as well as cultural items on loan to a museum. Now, museums must obtain consent from Indigenous governments before displaying funerary items, sacred objects, and cultural patrimony. Other obligations relate to consultation for the storage and care of cultural items.