Relocation of the main museum retail store into the historic Cashier’s Office of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan. Designed in collaboration with the Boston-based design firm Bergmeyer Associates.
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York (NMAI-NY), the George Gustav Heye Center, opened on October 30, 1994, in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, one of the most splendid Beaux Arts buildings in New York. Designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1907, the Custom House is a National Historic Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The George Gustav Heye Center (GGHC) is named for the New Yorker who, during the first half of the 20th century, assembled a collection of 800,000 Native objects from North, Central and South America. The Heye collection forms the cornerstone of the National Museum of the American Indian. Established by an Act of Congress in 1989, the NMAI is comprised of three separate facilities: the GGHC in New York, the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, and the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The relocation of the museum store at NMAI-NY is the fourth capital project in a 12-year strategic effort to build museum visitation and visibility while addressing evolving mission requirements. This strategy focused on four target areas of museum operations: live performance, exhibitions, educational services, and visitor amenities — resulting in four main goals: expanding the capacity for live performance (Diker Pavilion, 2006), increasing public access to the permanent collection (Infinity of Nations, 2010), establishing the imagiNATIONS Activity Center (iAC, 2018), and the relocation and rebranding of the new Native Arts store (Kapsee, 2018).
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