You’re welcomed into "Halumii Ktapihna: Lenape Legacies and Futures," a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, by a rather futuristic, life-sized interactive display featuring Munsee language teacher Kristin Jacobs of Eelünaapéewi Lahkéewiit in Ontario. As you walk past, Jacobs looks out at you, holding out a replica wampum treaty belt of her own making, inviting you to hear more about its design and significance—and to reckon for a moment with the very foundations of New York City.
The exhibition brings together the work of more than 30 contemporary artists in a variety of mediums to share ongoing stories of some of the continent's Lenape, or Lunáapeew, people, who were the original inhabitants of the place now called New York City, as well as New Jersey, Connecticut, and parts of Pennsylvania and Delaware. There are mixed media pieces and beadwork, baskets woven from ash trees, snow-white moccasins, ceremonial garments, and a slightly worn teal T-shirt. And it's one of two new exhibitions at the museum, each of which seeks in its own way to deepen New Yorkers’ understanding of this city, honor its complicated past—and broaden our sense of what’s possible in the future, as we face a tumultuous and frightening present.
