Lecture: "Betty Mitchell: Her Story"

Betty Seabury Mitchell, co-founder of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, will reflect on her years of collecting Native American art and will field questions from the audience during a talk titled "Betty Mitchell: Her Story."

"This is an opportunity for the public to hear from an astute, veteran collector of Native American art and a longtime advocate for the study and preservation of Native culture of the present as well as the past," says Kathleen McDonald, executive director of the Mitchell Museum. "And it's not every day you get the opportunity to meet a person whose name is on a prominent museum."

Mitchell founded the Evanston institution in 1977 with her husband, the late John M. Mitchell, with an initial donation of about 3,000 pieces of material culture and artworks to Kendall College, then located in northeast Evanston. The college housed the Mitchell Museum in a campus building until the museum moved to its present, permanent location in 1997.

Prior to establishing the museum, the Mitchells had displayed some of their collection in the Mitchell Brothers realty office on Green Bay Road in an area set aside as the Green Bay Trading Post.

Today, the Mitchell Museum is a fully independent, nonprofit educational institution with a collection of 10,000 items that ranks among the premiere holdings of Native American art and material culture in the Midwest. The museum, which focuses on Native peoples of North America, houses permanent and temporary exhibits and presents a wide range of speakers, special events, and children's workshops year-round.