Current Exhibitions

Shooting for Peace: Youth Behind the Lens

Through May 31, 2012

The young Colombian photographers’ images have graced the walls of the U.N. General Assembly Building and the National Geographic Society, but for the children, the exhibits in their own communities are the most meaningful.

Conservators at Work: Alaska's Historic Kayaks Renewed

Conservators will be working in the Hall of the North American Indian gallery on Mondays from 9 to 5 PM, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2 to 5 PM. New hours begin June 1: Mondays 12 to 3 PM and Tuesdays and Wednesdays 2 to 5 PM.

Translating Encounters: Travel and Transformation in the Early Seventeenth Century
Through December 2012

Wonder, confusion, and curiosity: just a few of the responses by Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans in the age of exploration, as each struggled to comprehend the other. Inspired by collections of the Peabody Museum, Houghton Library, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, this exhibit broadly explores global mobility, encounter, and exchange in colonial encounters among peoples of Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
 

Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West
Through 2013

Co-curators Castle McLaughlin and Lakota artist Butch Thunder Hawk use ambient sound, motion, scent, and historic and contemporary Plains art to animate nineteenth century Lakota drawings from a warrior’s ledger collected at the Little Bighorn battlefield. This exhibit presents Lakota perspectives on westward expansion while exploring culturally-shaped relationships between words, objects, and images.

Read the Metro Daily News review

Read the Boston Globe Review

Read the Gazette Story Drawing From History: Exhibit Evokes Lakota Cosmology

Digging Veritas: The Archaeology and History of the Indian College and Student Life at Colonial Harvard
Ongoing

Using archaeological finds from Harvard Yard, historic maps, and more, the Digging Veritas exhibition reveals how students lived at colonial Harvard, and the role of the Indian College in Harvard’s early years.

Digging Veritas Online

Storied Walls: Murals of the Americas
Through 2012

Throughout time and around the world, people have adorned the walls of their homes, palaces, tombs, temples, and government buildings with painted scenes and designs. Storied Walls explores spectacular wall paintings in Arizona, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

Ongoing Exhibitions

Encounters with the Americas
Encounters explores the native cultures of Latin America before and after 1492, when the first voyage of Christopher Columbus initiated dramatic worldwide changes. (Left Seated figure from the Hieroglyphic Stairway, Copan, Honduras. Photo by Mark Craig. PM 93-27-20/C871.1.)

Day of the Dead/Día de los Muertos
The Peabody's exhibition of a Day of the Dead altar or offrenda is located in the Encounters with the Americas gallery. It represents the original Aztec origins of the holiday and the Catholic symbols incorporated into the tradition.

Change & Continuity: Hall of the North American Indian
Diverse North American cultures are explored through the objects produced by indigenous peoples of the nineteenth century. The Changes and Continuity exhibit considers historic interactions between native peoples and Europeans during a period of profound social change. (left Kaats and Bear totem pole. PM 2001.26.1. Photo by Mark Craig.)

Pacific Islands Hall
The Hall features a diverse array of artifacts from the Pacific Islands brought to the Museum by Boston’s maritime merchants.