Inside the museum made of bones. Photo from Catalina Island Museum Blog
A new exhibit at the Catalina Island Museum in California explores a collector who looted Indian graves and used the bones as building materials. Ralph Glidden excavated numerous Tongva graves on Catalina Island in the 1920s and 1930s. He put the remains on display and used the bones to decorate the interior of his "Indian" museum. Wendy Teeter, the curator of archaeology at the Fowler Museum, told The Los Angeles Times that the exhibit presents "an opportunity to discuss what these kinds of collectors were doing across the country and to share some of the pain that Native American communities have been feeling all along." After Glidden's death, his collection was donated to the Catalina Island Museum. The ancestral remains were transferred to the Fowler Museum. Get the Story:
Catalina exhibit illuminates a dark episode in island's past (The Los Angeles Times 5/13)
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