The Florida Museum’s North American Indian ethnographic collection numbers more than 3,600 objects, making it the largest such collection in the Southeast. A major component of the collection came to the University of Florida in 1965 when a donor purchased the Leigh Morgan Pearsall collection for the museum.

With representative pieces from most of the major tribal cultures in North America, the Pearsall collection is especially rich in examples of North American Indian art made during the Reservation Period (1890-1920), a time of transition for American Indian cultures. Many of these pieces were originally purchased by Pearsall between 1900-1960, which makes the collection an important resource for studying the origins of the North American Indian art market.

The Pearsall gallery includes a selection of 500 objects, about 20% of the collection, from the United States and Canada, as well as a few Siberian artifacts from the Western Arctic.

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