Department of the Interior Museum

Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes believed that the Interior building, which was completed in 1936, should reflect the Department’s mission to manage and conserve the nation’s natural resources. So in 1941, he hired photographer Ansel Adams to create a photographic mural for the building that reflected this mission. The Interior Museum Murals Tour lasts an hour and visits 26 photographic murals by Ansel Adams and many of the over 50 mural panels painted by artists including Maynard Dixon, Allan Houser, Gifford Beal, John Steuart Curry and William Gropper. Spaces on the twice-weekly tours are filled quickly—reserve well in advance by phoning the museum.
The museum itself remains closed to the public. Its exhibits are a hotchpotch of Indian arts and crafts: Pueblo drums; Apache basketwork; Cheyenne arrows that a soldier plucked from dying buffalos at Fort Sill Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1868.