It was intended to show a diplomatic negotiation between the two groups, but the portrayal tells a different story.
The scene takes place in what is now known as the Battery, with ships on the horizon. The tribesmen wear loincloths, and their heads are adorned with feathers. A few Lenape women can be seen in the background, undressed to the waist, in skirts that brush the ground. They keep their heads down, dutiful. In front of a windmill are two fully clothed Dutchmen, one of them resting a rifle on his shoulder. The other, Peter Stuyvesant, colonial governor of New Netherland, is graciously extending his hand, waiting to receive offerings brought by the Lenape.
Critics have said the diorama depicts cultural hierarchy, not a cultural exchange. Museum officials said they had been aware of these implications for a while, and now they have addressed them.
The narrative, created in 1939, is filled with historical inaccuracies and clichés of Native representation, said Bradley Pecore, a visual historian of Menominee and Stockbridge Munsee descent. “These stereotypes are problematic, and they’re still very powerful. They shape the American public’s understanding of indigenous people.”
About a year ago, the museum asked Pecore to help solve the diorama problem. Should it be removed entirely? Could the protective glass be temporarily taken out, and what was behind it altered?
Lauri Halderman, the museum’s vice president for exhibition, said, “We could have just covered it over.” Instead, museum officials decided on a more transparent approach. “What was actually more interesting was not to make it go away,” Halderman said, “but to acknowledge that it was problematic.”
The solution offers a lesson in the changing nature of history itself. And it’s written on the glass.
While the scene remains intact, 10 large labels now adorn the glass, summarizing various issues. They were carefully chosen after a research process that took most of 2018. The largest one, visible from a distance, invites visitors to reconsider the scene.
The labels say, for instance, that if the scene had been historically accurate, the Lenape would have been dressed for the occasion in fur robes and adornments that signified leadership positions. Canoes would have been seen in the water next to the European ships. These were vital to colonial trade, providing access to items found further inland, where the larger ships could not navigate. The women did not wear impractical skirts that dragged behind them. Further, some are likely to have been part of the negotiations, as women in Lenape societies (past and present) typically hold leadership roles. While only Stuyvesant was originally identified, the new labels also take note of Oratamin, a respected leader of the Hackensack, a Munsee branch of the Lenape. The list goes on, but it is not complete; there’s only so much room on the glass.
“One thread that runs through this work is understanding who gets to tell the story in museums,” Halderman said.
Along with Halderman, Pecore worked on the project with the museum’s curator of North American ethnology, Peter Whiteley, who said the diorama’s problems came up early in his tenure, which began in 2001. Asked about the cost of the project, a museum representative estimated the amount at “tens of thousands of dollars,” but officials did not provide a precise figure.
The diorama is one of four in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, unveiled shortly after the death of former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1919. The others honor his life and conservation efforts. The New Amsterdam scene was meant to honor his Dutch ancestry, although Roosevelt was not a direct descendant of Stuyvesant. Pecore said the presence of indigenous people in this display signified their role in history. “You can only be so American without Native Americans,” he said. “For me, that’s the reason it’s in the Roosevelt memorial.”
A new panel placed on the wall near the diorama addresses an often-overlooked question: Where are the Lenape now?
Before the arrival of the Dutch, about 30,000 Lenape lived in their homeland, territory that is now the northeastern United States. Forced to move repeatedly over several generations, the roughly 16,000 remaining tribe members now live across Canada and in Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. The panel shows a map with arrows starting in the regions they had to leave and pointing to their new locations.
It was important to Pecore that the exhibition signal the continuing effects of colonization, as well as correct the stereotypical representations. “I’ve walked through different museums, and when you see Native people, they’re in the corner playing with stones. We never arrive to be fully modern humans.”
The changes come after three years of protests by members of Decolonize This Place, a movement urging institutions to acknowledge the struggles of indigenous peoples, and other groups asking the museum to change demeaning displays.
“There’s no question that the controversies around the memorial quickened our attention,” said Lisa Gugenheim, a senior vice president for strategic planning at the museum.
Among the group’s requests was the removal of the statue in front of the museum showing Roosevelt on his horse and the formation of an independent commission that would assess cultural representations across the museum.
Reassessing representations is, in part, the purpose of a current $14.5 million reconstruction of the Northwest Coast Hall, set to reopen next year. Showcasing indigenous artifacts collected on an expedition, the gallery presented them as belonging to cultures stuck in time, immune to historical change. The updated exhibition will include contemporary practices and the lives of present-day descendants and will contextualize the artifacts presented.
One of the best-known artifacts from the collection is what the museum calls the Great Canoe, displayed right outside the exhibit.
Gugenheim said amending the Stuyvesant diorama, as opposed to removing it, created the opportunity for dialogue. “We’re revealing the making of the cake and not just the end of the process,” she said. “We’re inviting visitors to imagine themselves, why did we feel the need to update it? And of course that applies to teachers and kids, too.”
Alan Czemerinski was visiting recently when he spotted the labels from across the hall and spent a few minutes reading them. “I probably would have walked by it otherwise,” he said. “It’s important to look back at historical representations and see what’s wrong.”
Another visitor, Alana Steinberg, said her experience was enhanced this way. “It’s interesting,” she said, “to see how cultural knowledge has changed over time.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.