A new online home for the erstwhile Southern Apache Museum is now operating in Houston, furthering a trend of digitizing cultural spaces that has accelerated during the pandemic era.

Those looking for a transformative delve into the history of Native culture can visit the renamed Southern Plains Museum and Cultural Center (SPMCC) latest iteration, which opened last November with the help of a $10,000 grant from the city's Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

The new virtual museum has space for a number of different smaller specialIzed museums addressing a number of categories related to the history of Native Americans in the region, including the original institution as well as an American Indian Genocide Museum. It also features a virtual library, garden, Aztec pyramid, and health clinic.

A virtual tour of the museum via YouTube

Virtual architecture firm INVI, which touts itself as creating “virtual experiences through architecture, storytelling, and design,” according to the studio’s website.

Visitors to the SPMCC can enter its flattened oval virtual space through a teepee entrance to find a clickable walkthrough tour of exhibits ranging from founder Chance Landry’s acrylic paintings critical of Thomas Edison’s Buffalo Dance (1894) to documents showcasing the brutal and deliberate murder of Sioux and Cheyenne prisoners, “regardless of age, sex, or condition,” by special order of General Custer. The interactive tour also provides digital views of various artifacts related to the Lipan Apache, who have called South Texas home since their pre-historic migration from what is now central Canada. 

“We’re going to use this as a catapult,” Landry, who previously operated a version of the museum out of a now-defunct mall space from 2012 to 2017 told The Houston Chronicle last fall. “It’s a strong foundation to get this thing going. Looking at it visually is different than just talking about it.”

The museum is open virtually for the time being and will continue to operate online until it has secured a new physical location, according to the SPMCC’s website.