Sunshine Thomas-Bear has visited a lot of museums in her role as the cultural preservation director for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and knows the feeling when an institution seems open to returning sacred objects.
The Denver Art Museum, she said after an introductory April meeting with museum staff, isn’t one of them.
“It does not seem they are willing to work with tribes,” she said, noting her tribe is still figuring out how many of the 130 objects in the Denver museum it will request back.
The experience of the Winnebago delegation is hardly an outlier. Representatives of multiple Native American tribes and foreign governments say the Denver Art Museum has not been open or amenable to returning pieces in its collection. Museum officials, they say, have been obstinate or unwelcoming.
Several have left meetings in the Mile High City feeling pessimistic about their chances of reclaiming important relics. Others say the museum has brushed aside their concerns, even when presented with strong evidence that relics had been plundered. The museum can be a stickler for guidelines and rules, they say, without trusting that the tribe or country knows best.
They say this has earned the museum a reputation among outside parties: Negotiations with the Denver Art Museum won’t be easy.
“They’re still in the mindset of, ‘This is the 1990s. This is ours. We decide what you get and don’t get,’ ” Thomas-Bear said, referencing a time when museums were far more defensive than they are now, amid a global reckoning in the art world over colonialism and white supremacy.
This reputation has even reached Congress. Three U.S. senators, in a letter to the Denver Art Museum’s director, late last month expressed their “grave concern” over The Denver Post’s reporting that the museum, in the lawmakers’ view, had failed to follow a 1990 law designed to return cultural objects to tribes.
Not all outside groups have had negative interactions with the Denver Art Museum.
“I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the institution,” said Brian Vallo, former governor of the Pueblo of Acoma in New Mexico, whose tribe has worked closely with the museum in recent years.
Denver Art Museum officials addressed these concerns in an interview with The Post, saying every object, every conversation with an outside tribe or country is unique. In response to this perceived negative reputation, they said they respect people’s opinions and impressions of meetings.
“We follow guidelines, we follow recommendations and we honor the specificity of the people and object involved,” said Angelica Daneo, the museum’s chief curator.
Andy Sinclair, a museum spokesperson, said the team that met with Thomas-Bear was “saddened and surprised to hear that the outcome of the consult was unsatisfactory.”
The Native arts team has reached out to the tribal representative to understand how the museum can better support the tribe’s needs moving forward, she said.
LEFT — Ceremonial items are displayed in the Indigenous Arts of North America exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, including a staff by Winnebago artist Ho-Chuck, circa 1940, on the right, in Denver on May 30, 2024. CENTER— Moccasins made by Winnebago artist Ho-Chunk, circa before 1936, made of buckskin, ribbon, silk and beads, are displayed at the Denver Art Museum. RIGHT — A pipe bag by artist Ho-Chunk, circa early 1900s, is displayed with other pouches at the Denver Art Museum on May 30, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
A history of reluctant dealings
There have been multiple instances in which the Denver Art Museum has expressed hesitancy to return objects to tribes and countries, though this mindset was hardly uncommon among Western institutions.
In a 1979 memo posted to its website, Denver Art Museum officials indicated ambivalence at giving back a war god to the Zuni tribe of New Mexico — citing many of the same justifications that museums long have used, and continue to use, to rebuff repatriation claims.
“The museum is concerned by the fact and the principle of the proposal to give away an object from its collection,” officials wrote, “especially one which is believed to be the finest example of its type.”
The museum outlined its concern that the piece, if given back to the tribe, could be stolen or otherwise destroyed by natural elements.
“The return of the object will assure its ultimate destruction,” officials wrote.
The Denver museum also worried that the precedent could cause “immensely complex problems for museums of many kinds throughout the nation.”
Ultimately, though, the museum decided to return the war god.
The art world has changed significantly since the Zuni case. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed by Congress in 1990, marked a seismic shift in the way American institutions deal with Indigenous cultural objects.
The law, known as NAGPRA, mandated any collection that receives federal funding return human remains and other sacred pieces to tribes — though some museums and universities have moved at a glacial pace.
In 2002, a group of five tribes reached an impasse with the Denver Art Museum over the repatriation of seven cultural items, including a medicine cord, a wood figurine, two painted skin caps and three masks.
The Western Apache NAGPRA Working Group — a collection of Apache tribes from Arizona — said in federal documents they felt they had provided sufficient evidence that the items were culturally affiliated with their communities. The Denver Art Museum disagreed.
A teenager slides down the stair railing at the Denver Art Museum on March 27, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
The dispute grew so intractable that the tribes took the unusual step of bringing it before the NAGPRA review committee, a federal body that mediates disagreements between tribes and museums.
The committee sided with the tribes, saying the group had provided sufficient evidence that the objects met the definitions of “scared objects” and “objects of cultural patrimony” under federal law.
“The return of these items to their resting places will be beneficial to the health of the Apache people,” committee members wrote.
The museum returned the objects the following year.
Lori Iliff, the Denver Art Museum’s senior provenance researcher, told The Post that the museum wanted to return those objects all along, but that the tribe wished for them to be repatriated under NAGPRA. The two sides disagreed on whether they met certain criteria under the law.
In 2019, an activist with a Nepali cultural heritage protection group emailed the Denver Art Museum about a limestone tablet in its collection. The tablet, depicting the Hindu god Shiva with his wife and children, had been stolen, Slok Gyawali of the Nepal Pride Project told 5280 magazine in 2021. He also provided research supporting his case.
A month later, the museum told Gyawali that it had confidence in the piece’s provenance, or ownership history.
“We are unaware of any substantiated claims of theft of this piece,” museum officials wrote, according to the magazine.
It wasn’t until the article was published that any movement occurred. Seven months after the story, the museum announced the stone tablet would be returned to Nepal.
Museum officials told The Post that Nepal in 2021 provided additional evidence that proved the piece had been stolen.
The relic, like many others that the museum has deaccessioned over the years, no longer appears on its website.
The Post in October reported that the Denver Art Museum removes from its website plundered objects and other pieces that have been removed from its collection. Unlike some museums, the Denver institution has no policy to preserve public-facing provenance and object pages after it gives back artifacts.
Experts say keeping this information available to the masses is an important transparency measure for a universal museum like Denver’s.
Daneo, the museum’s chief curator, told The Post that the institution has prioritized making more of its permanent collection available online. Officials have been adding provenance information to a dedicated webpage, which provides selected news releases on some, but not all, repatriations and deaccessions.
“We welcome people looking at this provenance,” Daneo said.
A patron looks over the objects displayed in the formerly named Bunker Gallery section of Southeast Asia art galleries of the Denver Art Museum on Tuesday, October 25, 2022, in Denver, Colorado. Inside the gallery, an ornament with deity figures from Cambodia, estimated to have been crafted in the 1100s out of Bronze, is displayed. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Lack of transparency
The museum’s transparency issues extend to dealings with foreign government representatives and tribal members.
A lawyer for Cambodia, in an April letter to the Denver Art Museum, requested again that the museum provide all provenance documents for objects that came from the ancient Khmer empire. The museum has previously returned at least five relics to the Southeast Asian nation, with several more designated to be returned soon.
Cambodian officials have been requesting these records for multiple years in order to track down looted relics across the globe — only to be rebuffed, they say.
“It’s kind of insane we have to do this guessing game,” Bradley J. Gordon, an American attorney leading Cambodia’s global quest to reclaim its plundered heritage, told The Post. “How did these pieces magically appear at the Denver Art Museum?”
There’s been a broad spectrum of how museums have reacted to Cambodian requests, he said.
“They definitely have not come to the table in a collaborative way,” Gordon said of the Denver Art Museum.
Sinclair, the museum spokesperson, said the institution has posted all the provenance information it has on Cambodian pieces to its website. Gordon said he believes there’s more documentation the museum has not shared.
Kirit Mankodi, a retired archaeologist who helps the Indian government track down looted antiquities, said Denver Art Museum officials initially responded to him when he brought to their attention 20 years ago a stolen object in their collection. But once he drilled down on repatriation, he said, the museum ghosted him.
“I certainly didn’t appreciate this lack of courtesy and it showed that they were not honest,” Mankodi said. The museum ended up handing the piece to U.S. officials in 2019 for its eventual return to India.
Sinclair previously told The Post that 2015 marked the first repatriation request from the Indian government. In 2018, American investigators provided documentation to the museum that the object had been looted.
The Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, meanwhile, say the museum has been intransigent, condescending and insensitive in consultations over the past two decades.
The Denver museum has rejected three formal claims for the tribes’ cultural heritage over the years, leading the tribes to feel that their efforts are fruitless, multiple tribal representatives told The Post for an article published in April.
The Post’s story on the Tlingit efforts prompted interest from Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs.
Denver Art museum director and CEO Christoph Heinrich walks through the Indigenous art exhibit at the Lanny and Sharon Martin Building in Denver on Oct. 7, 2021. (Photo by Rebecca Slezak/The Denver Post)
In a May 29 letter to the museum’s director, Christoph Heinrich, the senators requested a litany of records from the Denver institution, including an update on its current repatriation process; an itemized list of all the claims the museum has received; and an estimate of the pace of repatriation of cultural items under NAGPRA.
“Delayed repatriation is delayed justice for Native peoples,” the senators wrote.
Sinclair said the museum looks forward to responding to the committee’s questions. Daneo said the institution has engaged in renewed conversations with the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes in recent weeks, and are “listening and eager to collaborate.”
Denver’s process for claims seems more extensive than other museums, Thomas-Bear said. The museum, she said, did not defer to tribes or assume they knew the material best. One of her biggest disappointments with Denver, though, was that the staff employed a Native American associate curator, Dakota Hoska.
“You would think being Native American she would be understanding and sympathetic to NAGPRA issues,” Thomas-Bear said. “But instead it felt she was more of a gatekeeper.”
Hoska, in a statement, said she was “sad to learn that Sunshine Thomas-Bear’s perceptions of our interaction didn’t align with my intentions, which are always to provide transparency and access to our collections for Native community members.”
“I hope one day I can hear her perspective of her experience at the museum, and include her feedback into my future interactions with Native people,” she added. “I want all members of Indigenous communities to feel comfortable sharing their expectations and needs here.”
Sinclair said staff made available for review all artworks in its collection with Ho-Chunk or Winnebago affiliations. A few days after the consultation, she said, the museum shared provenance information with the tribe, which has not made formal repatriation claims.
This has become a common refrain: Tribes leave the museum unhappy, while the museum says there’s nothing more they can do since there has been no formal claim.
The fraught relations even prompted the Denver Art Museum’s Indigenous Arts curator to issue an apology for previous comments about the museum’s collections policies.
In a post to the museum’s website in late May, John Lukavic apologized for saying in a recent Post article that the museum is “not in the business of just giving away our collections.”
This “poorly expressed” language meant to convey the complexity of NAGPRA claims and repatriation processes, he wrote. The museum is reviewing its NAGPRA policies and “adjusting them to better serve Indigenous communities.”
“I am sorry for the hurt, pain, and anger these comments have caused Indigenous communities and specifically members of the Tlingit and Haida tribes in Alaska, as well as the DAM’s members, supporters and visitors,” Lukavic wrote. “Those comments are not a reflection of how I, or any of us in the DAM Native Arts team, feel about the artworks, objects and relationships we are entrusted with from Indigenous Nations and communities.”
An item, called “Drum (Gaaw),” is on display behind glass in the Northwest Coast and Alaska Native Art Galleries at the Denver Art Museum in Denver on March 27, 2024. Representatives of the Alaskan Tlingit tribe report they have been trying to reclaim the cultural item from the Denver Art Museum for more than 20 years. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“We wish they would come back”
Some tribes have had positive experiences with the Denver Art Museum.
Vallo, the former governor of the Pueblo of Acoma, said his tribe has collaborated closely with the museum in recent years. Museum officials, he said, have not just been interested in their own strategic goals, but also been keen on learning what’s important to Native artists, curators and scholars.
“We have had a really good relationship with them,” Vallo said.
That collaboration led to the museum agreeing to bring a host of historic weaves and textiles to display in an exhibition on the tribal reservation outside Albuquerque. The yearlong exhibition, which opens this fall, will also allow Indigenous weavers to study the craft of their ancestors to help revitalize the floundering tradition.
After the exhibition, though, the pieces will head back to Denver. Vallo said he hoped they could just stay, but the tribe has no agreement with the museum.
“We wish they would come back to the tribe at some point,” he said, “but that isn’t our reality.”
Jan N. Jacobs, chair of the museum’s Indigenous Community Advisory Council and member of the Osage tribe, said the museum has long operated in a proactive, not reactive, manner when it comes to tribal relations. Curators and other officials, she said, have always been open and accommodating.
“I don’t think they have been too hard (on tribal claims),” she said. “It’s laid out pretty clearly.”
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Repatriations have been front and center at the Denver Art Museum in recent years as law enforcement and media attention has increased scrutiny of its collection.
The museum has been distancing itself over the past 18 months from a former board trustee and research consultant named Emma C. Bunker, who helped build the museum’s 7,000-piece Asian art collection.
Bunker used her connections with high-rolling dealers to secure valuable objects for the museum’s collection. But her relationship with one dealer in particular, the disgraced Douglas Latchford, led the museum to acquire a host of Southeast Asian relics that had been plundered from ancient temples, The Post found in a three-part investigation in 2022.
Museum officials in March announced plans to repatriate 11 pieces tied to Latchford or Bunker. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to probe the museum’s Thai collection.
The museum in recent years has also returned stolen objects to Myanmar, India and Tibet.
In 2022, the Denver Art Museum announced the creation of a provenance research team, which now counts three full-time staffers.
Provenance research, Daneo said, is “at the core of our mission.”
“We are truly invested in learning about our collection,” she said.
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