For decades, a bronze plaque on UNI’s Campanile claimed that the historic tower clock mechanism had won the “World’s Grand Prize” at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. There was just one problem… the prize had never existed.
The University of Northern Iowa Museum has returned a collection of cultural artifacts to the Meskwaki Nation, donating them to the Meskwaki Cultural Center & Museum.
UNI Museum exhibit “Whose Voice?'' asks visitors to question who has the authority to be telling the stories of indigenous cultures and how to present these stories to the public.
Since their establishment by the Greeks, museums utilized colonialism as a means to collect and share the material culture of the world. In an attempt to position themselves as bastions of knowledge and truth, neutrality was sought, collecting from everyone without inserting their own intellectual agendas, political viewpoints, or personal expressions. Despite claims of neutrality, museums cannot…
