Credit to: Cynthia Chavez Lamar. Photo by Walt Lamar


Last January 19, the Smithsonian Institution announced that it had appointed Cynthia Chavez Lamar to become director of the National Museum of the American Indian, which is home to one of the largest collections of Native and Indigenous items in the world. Its exhibits are spread across three different facilities: New York, Washington, D.C., and Suitland, Maryland.


Currently the Acting Associate Director for Collections and Operations, Chavez Lamar is set to become the first Native American woman to serve as the museum’s director when she takes over the role on February 14.


“Dr. Chavez Lamar is at the forefront of a growing wave of Native American career museum professionals,” said Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute. “They have played an important role in changing how museums think about their obligations to Native communities and to all communities.”



Smithsonian Museum © iStock


An enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, Chavez Lamar’s maternal ancestry boasts Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo. She will be the third director of the National Museum of the American Indian, succeeding Kevin Gover, a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe, whose tenure spanned from 2007 to 2021. He, in turn, was preceded by W. Richard West Jr., a Southern Cheyenne who became the museum’s founding director in 1990.


“I am excited to begin my tenure as the director of the National Museum of the American Indian,” said Chavez Lamar in a statement. “I am looking forward to leading and working with the museum’s experienced and dedicated staff. Together, we will leverage the museum’s reputation to support shared initiatives with partners in the U.S. and around the world to amplify Indigenous knowledge and perspectives all in the interest of further informing the American public and international audiences of the beauty, tenacity, and richness of Indigenous cultures, arts, and histories.”


The National Native American Veterans Memorial is located at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Photo by Indianz.Com


Chavez Lamar is known for her long and colorful career, having earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in studio art, a master’s degree in American Indian studies from the University of California in Los Angeles, and a doctorate in American Studies from the University of New Mexico.


From 2000 to 2005, Chavez Lamar served as an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, where she handled “Our Lives,” an inaugural exhibition that was made possible with the help of eight Native communities.


In 2006, she became the director of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico – a position that she held until the following year.


Chavez Lamar also served as director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 2007 to 2014. There, she developed institutional projects and programs to help raise awareness for the 12,000-object collection.


From there, Chavez Lamar became the assistant director for collections at the National Museum of the American Indian.


Credit to: naturalhistory.si.edu


“In this role, she guided the overall stewardship of the museum’s collection, which is one of the largest and most extensive collections of Native and Indigenous items in the world,” said the Smithsonian Institute in its announcement. “Chavez Lamar led museum efforts to improve collection access and availability by advocating for and encouraging an increase in the number of collections online. She supported the development of a collection-information system module to record access, care, and handling instructions provided by tribal, nation, and community representatives.”


The Smithsonian Institute added, “Chavez Lamar also established and prioritized partnerships and collaborations with Native nations and tribes, and developed a loan program for tribal museum and cultural centers that provides training and technical assistance to enhance [the] collection’s stewardship and reconnects descendant communities with the museum’s collections.”


Besides her contributions to museums, Chavez Lamar is also an author and scholar, whose research mainly focuses on Southwest Native art. In her new role, she will be overseeing three different facilities: the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan, the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, and the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.


The art world has welcomed the news of Chavez Lamar’s appointment, noting that she joins a growing list of Native Americans working as museum professionals.


It includes Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), who, in 2020, became the first-ever full-time curator of Native American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There is also Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), who was recently named director of the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe.



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