Neihardt Visitor Center and Museum
The Neihardt Visitor Center includes a museum, exhibit space, library, and administrative offices.
The museum is circular, reprising the Sacred Hoop motif that was important to Neihardt and is also reflected in the Sacred Hoop Garden. Display cases house artifacts from various landmarks in Neihardt's life: Youth, Family, Influences, Lyrics and Prose Works, Neihardt the Journalist, A Cycle of the West, Black Elk Speaks and Enduring Legacy. Featured are photographs, copies of his publications, various memorabilia, and items given to Neihardt by the Lakota holy man Black Elk.
In the center of the room is a cycad; the cycad is an ancient plant-form that symbolizes the tree of life. There are directional markers explaining the significance of the four directions and the black and red roads of the Sacred Hoop.
Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Exhibit
Through 2022, the visitors’ center will house the Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Exhibit. “Dr. Susan,” born into a prestigious Native American family at the Omaha Agency (near modern-day Macy, Nebraska) in 1865, was the first Native American medical doctor.
While the Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital in Walthill, Nebraska, is being renovated, the Neihardt Foundation is partnering with the Picotte Foundation to display many of her personal artifacts.
Dr. Susan, along with members of her family, are buried in the Bancroft Cemetery, near the Neihardt Center. The LaFlesche and Neihardt families were well acquainted.
F.W. “Bill” Thomsen Art Exhibit
Among the visitors’ center permanent collection is the F.W. “Bill” Thomsen Exhibit, which consists of paintings based on Black Elk Speaks. Thomsen (1906-1991) was an artist, visionary, minister, and teacher who was greatly influenced by Neihardt and Black Elk. Born in Denmark, his family came to the United States when he was 6. He would go on to start the art department at Dana College in Blair, Nebraska.
Thomsen’s 12 paintings (oils, pastels, and mixed media) tell the story of Black Elk Speaks through vivid graphics, paired with quotations from the book.
