The Project

One Million Bones is a large-scale social arts practice, combining education, hands-on art making, and public installations to raise awareness of ongoing genocides and mass atrocities in places like Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Burma.

On April 14, 2018, part of the remaining 300,000 ceramic bones, from the One Million Bones installation on the National Mall, have been laid out in a ceremony in a wide meadow in the wilderness surrounding the Bear Mountain Lodge in Silver City, New Mexico.

During a lecture given by One Million Bones founder Naomi Natale and project manager Susan McAllister at as part of the Edwina & Charles Milner Women in the Arts Lecture Series at Western New Mexico University in late September, the One Million Bones project found a permanent home. Moved by the lecture and inspired by the project, the partners in Bear Mountain Arts (John McNulty, Jeff Brown, Tom and Sharon Dukes, Diane Fisher, Linda Brewer and John Rohovec) approached Natale and McAllister about moving their exhibit to Silver City. They offered to host One Million Bones in a permanent installation on location at Bear Mountain Lodge.

The proposal for the permanent installation includes plans for ongoing education in the schools and bone making workshops via a partnership with Syzygy Tile. These additions will allow people to add their own handcrafted bones to the original installation.