‘IndiVisible’: New Smithsonian exhibit looks at blended ancestry of blacks and American Indians
One of the portraits of a blended black-American Indian family included in “IndiVisible.”
If You Go
* What: “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas” exhibit. * Where: Museum Center at Five Points, 200 E. Inman St., Cleveland, Tenn. * When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays, through July 3. * Admission: $5 adults, $4 seniors and students, free for children under 5. * For more information: 423-339-5745.
Two old-fashioned, wooden auditorium chairs might be questionable additions to a Smithsonian Institution exhibition, but in the case of “IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” the folding chairs are silent reminders of the struggle for acceptance by the two featured minorities, especially those who intermarried between those races.
“The chairs are balcony seats from the Princess Theatre in downtown Cleveland, where blacks and American Indians had to sit prior to civil rights and desegregation,” explains Joy Veenstra, the Museum Center at Five Points’ curator of education.
