Metropolitan Museum of Art Adds Plaque Honoring the Lenape

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 7, 2021 in New York City. ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

More and more within the art and academic worlds, institutions have been going out of their way in order to acknowledge and pay homage to the fact that their structures rest on indigenous land. The New Museum acknowledges that it sits on the homeland of the Lenape peoples; the Art Institute of Chicago states that it’s located on the unceded homelands of thr Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has joined major other institutions in this practice. On Tuesday, the museum installed a plaque near its main entrance acknowledging that it sits on the land of the Indigenous Lenape people.

In total, the plaque reads as follows: “The Metropolitan Museum of Art is situated in Lenapehoking, homeland of the Lenape diaspora, and historically a gathering and trading place for many diverse Native peoples, who continue to live and work on this island. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, and future—for their ongoing and fundamental relationships to the region.” According to Artforum, before the Lenape were first met by the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano in 1542, approximately 15,000 members of the Indigenous tribe were living in what is now New York City.

Subsequently, the Lenape were forced westward by the practices of colonization, and were eventually forcibly resettled by the US government. For the museum to acknowledge this legacy is certainly a step forwards towards the institution also changing from within. “The Met has a responsibility to share truthful narratives of our past and present,” the museum put forth in a statement. “It’s not enough to simply install a plaque on a building, however. Even more meaningful is the museum’s commitment to pursue substantive collaborations with diverse Indigenous communities, to actively embody our respectful acknowledgment and to effect social change beyond our doors.”