Sculpted by wind and water: Native Americans join a Building Team in the creation of a complex,...

On a recent crisp, clear spring morning, as I approached the National Museum of the American Indian from the east, the brilliant sunlight bathed its limestone curves in variegated shades from deep saffron to burnished gold to honeyed ocher.

Evoking the organic process by which wind and water have carved the sandstone canyons and mesas of the desert Southwest, the undulating, almost feminine form of the $199 million, 260,000-sf museum shines in bright contrast to the somber, rectilinear gray edifices of its classical Greek and Roman counterparts on Washing-ton's National