To safeguard fragile cultural objects, some groups are replicating them with digital models
In a cavernous Smithsonian Institution workshop, a team of imaging experts laser scans a small, hand-carved cedar hat. It was crafted more than 140 years ago from a solid piece of wood and depicts a bear with large copper eyes.
Back at the workshop in the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in Maryland, staff have spent dozens of hours capturing and processing information to create the 3-D model of the Haida bear hat. Using a technique called photogrammetry, E. Keats Webb, an imaging scientist at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, took 1,415 overlapping pictures of the object from every possible angle.
In 2012 a cultural specialist from the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska recognized a severely damaged clan crest hat in the form of a sculpin fish on NMNH’s shelves. The sculpin hat, or Wéix’ s’áaxw in Tlingit, had been at the museum since the 1880s. It was badly broken and could no longer be used in ceremonies. The Kiks.ádi, the Tlingit clan to which the hat belongs, asked NMNH to re-create the item so it could have a version for ceremonial use.
The Tlingit allowed the damaged original sculpin hat to remain at NMNH, though the group had the right to request its return under federal legislation. Repatriation of Native American items from Smithsonian collections is governed by the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989. The law was the first at the federal level to mandate the return of eligible Indigenous American objects and human remains.
With such risks taken into account, Hollinger says, the possibility of future partnerships is encouraging. The Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center has created several 3-D models of items for its Web site independently of NMNH. The center has not worked with Hollinger’s team, but its director Candy Taylor says she sees vast potential for documenting Comanche beading works that are currently in other Smithsonian museums.
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