Exhibitions: Harlow Brooks Memorial

July 19, 1944: On Friday, July 21st the Brooklyn Museum opens an exhibition memorializing Dr. Harlow Brooks and his wide interest in mankind. This exhibit, which will be on view in the Photographic Gallery, 2nd floor until August 20th, is a selection of the varied material collected by Dr. Brooks during his lifetime and is a reflection of romantic experiences such as few men enjoyed even in those fabulous days of the buffalo-hunting Sioux Indians. This gift to the Brooklyn Museum is rich in American Indian art and handicraft distributed from Alaska to Peru also containing ethnological specimens from Africa, Lapland and other parts of the world. Notable examples of painted, beaded and quill-worked shirts, moccasins, bags, etc. of the Plains and Woodland Indians are included, baskets from California, Navajo blankets, ancient jewelry of Peru and fine examples of Bolivian weaving. There are weapons and decorated clothing which formerly belonged to such famous Indians as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Some Indian-made garments were made for Dr. Brooks himself and worn by him in hunting expeditions in the west.

Born in Minnesota in 1871 Harlow Brooks got his first education in local schools. As a boy, after a serious illness, he was befriended by an old Indian medicine man. This was at the time when the practical extinction of the buffalo had demoralized Indian economy, and the young Brooks made five horseback trips across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to Oregon. After the death of his Indian friend Brooks began his college career in the University of Oregon, receiving his MD from the University of Michigan in 1895 to become one of America’s most distinguished men of medicine. He retained a love and admiration for the Indian and supported the scientific study of the redman’s medical practices.

The Museum is open to the public weekdays from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. and on Sundays from 1 P.M. to 5 P.M.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1942 - 1946. 07-09/1944, 073. View Original