National Cowboy Museum receives $400,000 NEH grant for upcoming exhibit 'Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World'

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $400,000 grant to support the exhibition “Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World” at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 

The first major presentation on the Spiro Mounds ever undertaken by a museum, the exhibition will share the art, history and culture of the Spiro people, representing the first, and possibly last, time these artifacts will be reunited from various collections across the country.

The exhibition will include about 200 objects and will debut at National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Feb. 12 to May 16, 2021, before traveling to the Birmingham Museum of Art and then to the Dallas Museum of Art, according to news release.  

The Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma are one of the United States’ most important ancient Native American sites, yet the Spiro people are nearly forgotten in the pages of history books, despite creating one of the most sophisticated ancient cultures. It is believed that the Spiroan people, along with other Mississippian groups across the eastern half of North America, created a world equal to that of the Aztec, Maya or Inca, consisting of trade networks and highly developed social, political and religious centers.