Southern Plains Indian Museum

The Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko focuses on the art, history and living cultures of Native nations of the southern Plains. The museum's collections and exhibitions have long highlighted artists from tribes with deep ties to western and southwestern Oklahoma, including Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Caddo, Delaware and Wichita communities. Art is central to the experience. Painting, beadwork, clothing, sculpture and other forms demonstrate both continuity and innovation, showing that Native artistic traditions are not frozen in the nineteenth century. Exhibits can connect ceremonial, family and community traditions with the work of individual modern artists. The museum's location in Anadarko is important because the city has been a major center of Native life and federal Indian administration for generations. Nearby tribal museums, cultural centers and historic sites make it possible to build a much broader itinerary around the region. Visitors should approach the museum as a place representing living nations and contemporary artists, not simply as a collection of "Indian artifacts." That perspective gives the exhibits far more depth and places southern Plains history within an ongoing cultural story.