The Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center has received a $144,000 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services to create a permanent exhibit depicting life on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The museum announced they plan to transform a space into a replica of the house of former tribal member Matt Langevin. The house will be the setting of the Almost Vanished Object Theater, which will tell the story of Langevin and the Mashantuckets through words, sounds and images.
“Receiving these grants has been a blessing for not just the tribal nation but the museum and its staff,” Kimberly Hatcher-White, the museum’s executive director, said in a statement. “We have worked very hard over the past three years to see this dream come to fruition. ‘Aunt Matt,’ as she was affectionately known throughout the community, left no living descendants but opened up her home to many living on and off of the reservation today.”
The new exhibit is planned to open in February 2011.
The Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center is the largest such facility in the world, featuring extensive and engaging permanent exhibits on 18,000 years of Native American and natural history, libraries, research laboratories and live performances of Native arts and culture. More than 1 million people have visited the Center since it opened in 1998.
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center 110 Pequot Trail P.O. Box 3180 Mashantucket, CT 06338-3180
www.pequotmuseum.org