Beth Blankley, Alison Aldrich, Megan Galaida, and Michelle Sweetser spent their time in the archives of the National Museum for the American Indian (NMAI), working on four very different projects.

Beth described and arranged records for the MAI's (pre-Smithsonian acquisition) Education Department. Specifically, she organized material that dealt with the development of a curriculum. It was a wonderful experience to see the process of creating a publication from securing funding, to contacting sources, to creating artwork to printing. 

Alison conducted research on Christian hymns that are performed in Native American languages, where these performances take place, and how the Smithsonian Institution may gain access to existing recordings or arrange for recording sessions. Ultimately, NMAI will produce an anthology CD of these recordings. Alison focused on organizing the results from previous research and searched specifically for leads on Native Central and Latin Americans.

Megan's project entailed viewing videotape from the "All Roads Are Good" exhibit. She reviewed the tapes and identified footage of objects that corresponded with those pictured in the exhibition catalog. Megan chose tape clips that will be included as video files in an object database. This database will be available in the Resource Center in the NMAI Mall Museum when it is completed in 2004, as well as via the Resource Center Web site.

For NMAI and the American Art Museum, Michelle put together a timeline of Native American history from which several major historical events will be included in the George Catlin exhibit at the Renwick gallery this fall. She studied NMAI's timelines of American/European history, read the history of Catlin's life and materials on Native American history, selected important events to be added in the timeline, and selected the 10-15 most significant events that should be part of the exhibit. Michelle was also able to learn about the process of developing the exhibit and to see the mock-up of the exhibit arrangement.