University Museum Installs "Native Arkansas" Exhibit

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – For the first time ever, The University of Arkansas Museum will install “Native Arkansas,” an exhibit that views the territory that would become Arkansas through the eyes of European and American explorers. The exhibit will be featured in the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ Concordia Gallery from October 11, 2013 to February 22, 2014.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies is at 401 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.

Early writings of the first  explorers provide records of plants, animals, rocks, and fossils of the region and document evidence of the people who occupied the state during the prehistoric period, some of whom were ancestors to the native communities that populated Arkansas at that time. These writings provide information that will allow visitors to figuratively enter and experience early Arkansas.

The exhibit is curated and will be installed by Mary Suter, curator of collections, and Nancy McCartney, curator of zoology. They will be assisted by Ben Donnan, graduate assistant in anthropology; Clint Wray, a senior majoring in earth science and journalism; and Bradley Graves, a freshman majoring in anthropology. The staff of the Butler Center, particularly art administrator Colin Thompson, will also be involved with the installation.

The exhibit is sponsored by the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Visitors will enter the exhibit at the Arkansas Post and continue to tour five regions of the state—the Mississippi and St. Francis river floodplains and Crowley’s Ridge north of the Arkansas River; the Mississippi River Valley south of the Arkansas River; the Ozarks of the northwest; the Ouachitas and the West Gulf Coastal Plain in the southwest; and the Arkansas River Valley, through the middle of the state.

The exhibit will include artifacts from the Mississippian period, bluff shelters and Caddo tribes. There will also be an in-depth look at the Native American community of Carden Bottoms, with a glimpse of how Native Arkansans understood their natural environment. Examples of the flora, fauna, and geology of each region will also be included. All of the objects and specimens are from the U of A Museum’s collections, the U of A Herbarium, and the U of A Arthropod Museum. Some objects will be represented by photographs.