The executive director of Evanston’s Mitchell Museum of the American Indian says the museum plans to rebrand itself this year.
Kim Vigue said the museum’s board wants to better reflect the contemporary lives of native people, in addition to serving as a repository for their history, and to become more involved in advocacy for indigenous people.
Vigue spoke at a roundtable discussion at the Central Street museum Friday attended by Shelly Lowe, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Lowe’s Evanston visit was part of a four-day Chicago-area tour organized by Illinois Humanities.
Vigue says the museum, founded in 1977 by Evanstonians John and Betty Mitchell, became majority-native lead in 2022, and that its board is looking to expand.
About 7,000 people visited the museum in 2023, and Vigue says school tours increased by 90%. She said free admission days have boosted the museum’s foot traffic, as has allowing museum members to borrow books from its extensive library.
The museum now features a traveling exhibition that showcases art meant to bring attention to the grim epidemic of unsolved killings among indigenous women.
“Our whole focus will change,” Vigue said. “In the past…the exhibits, texts and stories were…not developed by native people. You’re not getting a full authentic experience or accurate history when its being told from somebody else’s perspective. That’s the biggest change going forward is that the stories and exhibits will come directly from native people.”
During the tour, Vigue said that one major change would be to rename the museum. A new name has not been chosen, but it Vigue indicated it certainly will drop the outdated term “Indian” to describe the native population.
A survey about the rebranding project is available online.