Dance object

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This object hung from the roof of a ceremonial house, and it honored the animals taken in the hunt. A male figure wears a traditional Yup‘ik bentwood hunting hat and pilots a magical kayak disguised as a walrus—the head, tail, and flippers of the creature are visible. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, featured this assemblage at the entrance to its famous 1941 exhibition, “Indian Art of the United States.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art