Archives West Finding Aid

Albert Parker Niblack was born in Vincennes, Indiana on July 25, 1859, the son of prominent congressman, and Indiana Supreme Court Justice William Niblack. Niblack was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1876 and graduated in 1880.

In 1885, Niblack joined the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and became a member of the Alaska Survey Team. The United States Coast Survey steamer Carlile Patterson traveled along the southeast coast of Alaska in 1885, carrying the Alaska Survey Team. While surveying southeastern Alaska, Niblack photographed the native villages of Kasaan and Chasina on Prince of Wales Island. The photographs were later published in the US National Museum Annual Report of 1890, titled "The Coast Indians of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia: Based on the collections in the U.S. National Museum, and on the personal observation of the writer in connection with the survey of Alaska in the seasons of 1885, 1886, and 1887."

During his tenure in the U.S. Navy, Niblack held posts at the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Smithsonian Institution's Division of Anthropology and the National Museum. He served as a naval attache to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany and The Netherlands. He also toured the South Pacific and Pacific Northwest coastlines and became interested in anthropology, ethnography, and Native American culture.

Over the course of his travels, Niblack began collecting textiles. Upon his death in 1929, he bequeathed these to his sister, Eliza Maria Niblack, also an avid textile collector. Following Eliza's death in 1933, the Niblack family bestowed the collection to what would become the Indiana Museum of Art (IMA), which currently maintains one of the oldest and most preeminent textile collections in the United States.