Native Americans - WKTV Journal

The Grand Rapids Public Museum. (Supplied)

The Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) and Grand Rapids Public Museum School announced a new exhibit created by GRPS Museum School students, titled Revolution: The Story of America, opens today, May 23.

The exhibit is a combination of student work from the Grand Rapids Public Museum School’s 7th grade social studies classes and art classes.

Visitors will see various sections highlighting important women, African Americans, and Native Americans and their roles in the American Revolution. It also includes a flag replica display, in which the students researched flags from the American Revolution, drew replicas, and completed summaries about their flag and its role.

In art class, Museum School students “musees” researched military uniforms, sketched them out, and then wrote a letter from the perspective of a soldier during the Revolutionary War, using special ink.

“The Museum is excited to showcase students’ work through the partnership between the GRPM and GRPS,” said Kate Kocienski, Vice President of Marketing & PR at the GRPM. “The Museum School allows students a deeper learning experience through place based learning and design thinking, while using the Museum’s Collections of more than 250,000 artifacts and specimens.”

This new exhibit will be free with general admission and be on display for a short time, through June 8. Visitors can find Revolution: The Story of America on the Museum’s second floor.

Grand Rapids Public Museum opens a new exhibit tomorrow. — Grand Rapids Public Museum opens a ‘Walking Beyond Our Ancestors’ Footsteps: An Urban Native American Experience.’

The Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) announced today a new regional traveling exhibit titled Walking Beyond Our Ancestors’ Footsteps: An Urban Native American Experience will open Saturday, April 2.

This exhibition invites visitors to step into the gaze of a few of the Native Americans who have lived, worked and studied in the greater Grand Rapids area over the mid-20th and 21st centuries and features contemporary artwork by local Native American artists. The show contains historic documents and objects made by local Native Americans during the past several decades.

Walking Beyond our Ancestors Footsteps will be in the Museum’s Circle Theater, a 800-square-foot area on the third floor located next to the core exhibition Anishinabek: The People of This Place. Admission will be included with general admission to the GRPM. This exhibit will be on display through June 19.

This exhibit is part of the work completed in conjunction with the “Gi-gikinomaage-min (We are all teachers): Defend Our History, Unlock Your Spirit” project, which is managed by the Kutsche Office of Local History at Grand Valley State University. That project has been supported in part by the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. To learn more, go here.