The story of the forced assimilation of American Indian children at federal Indian schools is a tragic one, in which they were removed from familiar lands and loving families and transported to distant communities. The physical environment designed to house this story at the Heard Museum is one of enclosed spaces and narrow corridors with no blue sky in sight. A spacious gallery that once featured an overlook into the areas below was given new life as old-style architecture. Subdivided, transomed and paneled, The Boarding School Experience evokes the strange world of tiny 19th century classrooms and dormitory rooms that became home for at least two generations of Indian children.