Chavez Lamar named director of National Museum of the American Indian
Cynthia Chavez Lamar has been
named director of the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of the American Indian,
effective Feb. 14. She is the first Native
woman to be named as a Smithsonian
museum director.
Chavez Lamar has been at the museum
most recently since 2014 and earlier in her
career was a museum intern (1994) and
later an associate curator (2000-2005). She
is currently the museum’s acting associate
director for collections and operations.
Chavez Lamar is an accomplished
curator, author and scholar whose research
interests are focused on Southwest Native
art and the methodologies and practices
involved in collaborating with Indigenous
communities.
Chavez Lamar will oversee the muse-
um’s three facilities: the National Museum
of the American Indian (NMAI) on the
National Mall in Washington, D.C.; the
museum’s George Gustav Heye Center
in Lower Manhattan; and the Cultural
Resources Center in Suitland, Md.
The Cultural Resources Center houses
the museum’s collections and its curatorial
and repatriation offices; laboratories and
work rooms for conservation, collections
management, registration, photography,
film and video; a computer and informa-
tion-resource center; a library; and indoor
and outdoor spaces for Native cultural care
practices and use of the collections.
“Dr. Chavez Lamar is at the forefront
of a growing wave of Native American
career museum professionals,” said Lon-
nie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian.
“They have played an important role in
changing how museums think about their
obligations to Native communities and
to all communities. We look forward to
Cynthia’s leadership as the NMAI enters a
new phase of service to the Native peoples
of the Western Hemisphere.”
Since January 2021, Chavez Lamar
has served as acting associate director for
collections and operations at the museum.
She is responsible for overseeing its col-
lections, facilities, safety and information
technology departments.
She leads efforts to ensure effective
management of and care for the museum’s
collection, which is composed of more
than 1 million objects and photographs,
and more than 500,000 digitized images,
films and other media documenting Native
communities, events and organizations.
“I am excited to begin my tenure as
the director of the National Museum of the
American Indian,” said Chavez Lamar. “I
am looking forward to leading and work-
ing 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.”
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18 •
Siletz News
•
February 2022
From 2014 through 2020, Chavez
Lamar served as assistant director for
collections at the museum. 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.
Chavez Lamar led museum efforts to
improve collection access and availabil-
ity by advocating for an increase in the
number of collections online. She sup-
ported the development of a collection-
information system module to record
access, care and handling instructions
provided by Tribal, nation and community
representatives.
Chavez Lamar also established and
prioritized partnerships and collabora-
tion with Native nations and Tribes,
and developed a loan program for Tribal
museum and cultural centers that pro-
vides training and technical assistance
to enhance collections stewardship and
reconnects descendant communities with
the museum’s collections.
Chavez Lamar was the director of the
Indian Arts Research Center at the School
for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M.,
from 2007 to 2014. While there, she raised
the visibility of the 12,000-object collec-
tion and developed institutional projects
and programming to highlight it.
She also led and supported the devel-
opment of Guidelines for Collaboration to
assist Native communities in accessing
museum collections and museums work-
ing collaboratively with them.
From 2006 to 2007, she was the direc-
tor of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in
Albuquerque, N.M. From 2000 to 2005,
Chavez Lamar was an associate curator at
NMAI and the lead curator for Our Lives,
one of the inaugural exhibitions in the
Washington, D.C., museum when it opened
in 2004. She collaborated with eight Native
communities on the exhibition.
Chavez Lamar was a presidential
appointee to the Institute of American
Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts
Development in 2011. She was a gover-
nor’s appointee as a commissioner to the
Courtesy photo by Walter Lamar
Cynthia Chavez Lamar
New Mexico Arts Commission from 2009
to 2012. She currently sits on the advisory
group for Indigenous North America at
the Princeton University Art Museum and
she is a member of the advisory board at
the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at
Colorado College.
Chavez Lamar is an enrolled member
at San Felipe Pueblo and her ancestry also
includes Hopi, Tewa and Navajo on the
maternal side of her family. She earned
a bachelor’s degree from Colorado Col-
lege in studio art, a master’s degree in
American Indian studies from UCLA and
a doctorate in American studies from the
University of New Mexico.
She also received an honorary doctor-
ate from Colorado College for her contri-
butions to the museum field.
Chavez Lamar is the third NMAI
director. She succeeds Kevin Gover
(Pawnee), who served as director from
December 2007 until January 2021. He
is now the Smithsonian’s Under Secre-
tary for Museums and Culture. Machel
Monenerkit has served as acting director
of the National Museum of the American
Indian since Gover left in January 2021.
The founding director was W. Richard
West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne), who led the
museum from 1990 to 2007.