The Wheelwright Museum

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian was founded in nineteen thirty-seven by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, a Boston heiress, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo medicine man, weaver, and singer. Their collaboration began in the nineteen twenties when Wheelwright traveled to the Navajo Nation and persuaded Klah to help her record Navajo ceremonial songs and sand-painting designs that might otherwise be lost. The building itself was designed by William Penhallow Henderson and modeled on the Navajo ceremonial hogan.

Klah and Wheelwright understood that they were in a race against assimilation and the forces dismantling traditional ceremony. The museum's founding collection includes sandpainting reproductions and ceremonial materials. The museum also includes the Case Trading Post in its basement.