The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), administered by the Smithsonian Institute, is the first national museum dedicated to the preservation, study, and exhibition of the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of Native Americans. Established by an act of Congress in 1989, the museum opened in September, 2004 in a five-story, 250,000-square-foot curvilinear building, set in a 4.25 acre-site surrounded by simulated wetlands. The building, designed by a team of GBQC and Douglas Cardinal, Ltd., which included consultants Douglas Cardinal (Blackfoot), Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw), Donna House (Diné/Oneida), and Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi), is clad in a golden-colored Kasota limestone designed to evoke natural rock formations shaped by wind and water over thousands of years. In 1944, the NMAI opened an annex in New York--the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, at the historic
Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House.
The Smithsonian Institution, an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazines, was established in 1846. Although concentrated in Washington DC, its collection of over 136 million items is spread through 19 museums, a zoo, and nine research centers from New York to Panama.
