Mitchell Museum of the American Indian

Category: Museum

Mitchell Museum of the American Indian is the only museum in the Chicago-area that focuses exclusively on the history, culture and arts of North American native peoples.

The Mitchell Museum of the American Indian was founded in 1977 with John and Betty Mitchell's gift to Kendall College of their Native American collection. Based on almost 60 years of collecting, primarily among the Southwest, Plains and Great Lakes Indians, the Mitchell Collection provided a nucleus of approximately 3,000 individual objects. Over the past 20 years numerous gifts and purchases have increased the Museum's collection to more than three times the original size.

In 1997 the Mitchell Museum moved to its current home in northwest Evanston, approximately 2 miles from the main Kendall College campus. The three level brick and concrete building provides room for permanent exhibits dedicated to the Native cultures of the Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Northwest Coast and Arctic regions of North America. Each gallery contains a "touching table" where visitors can handle real examples of Indian artifacts, as well as feel the raw materials - including snakeskin, caribou fur, birch bark, turquoise and buffalo skin - that were used by Native Americans. There are also two changing galleries that feature special temporary exhibits.