The American Museum of Natural History will close two halls featuring Native American artifacts to comply with new rules requiring museums to gain tribal consent before exhibiting cultural items, its president said Friday.

In a letter obtained by NY1, museum president Sean Decatur told staff members the museum's Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls would close this weekend to comply with Biden administration regulations that took effect this month.

"Both Halls display artifacts that, under the new [federal] regulations, could require consent to exhibit," Decatur wrote. "The number of cultural objects on display in these Halls is significant, and because these exhibits are also severely outdated, we have decided that rather than just covering or removing specific items, we will close the Halls."

The museum will also cover three cases outside the Hall of Eastern Woodlands and two cases in the Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples in which Native Hawaiian items are displayed, Decatur said.

Two cases in the museum's Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall will be covered as well, he added.

Decatur said school field trips to the Eastern Woodlands Hall would be suspended effective immediately, but noted that the museum remains "committed to supporting teaching and learning about Indigenous peoples."

The U.S. Department of the Interior in December announced new regulations aimed at expediting the return of Native American remains and items including funerary and sacred objects under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.

The new rules require museums and federal agencies to "obtain free, prior and informed consent from lineal descendants, Tribes or [Native Hawaiian Organizations] before allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items," the department said in a release at the time.

In a statement included in the release, Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland called NAGPRA "an essential tool for the safe return of sacred objects to the communities from which they were stolen."

"Among the updates we are implementing are critical steps to strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process," Haaland, the first Native American to lead the agency, said. "Finalizing these changes is an important part of laying the groundwork for the healing of our people."

In Friday's letter, Decatur did not say when or if the museum would reopen the two major halls.

"While the actions we are taking this week may seem sudden, they reflect a growing urgency among all museums to change their relationship to, and representation of, Indigenous cultures," he wrote. "The Halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples."

"Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others," he added. "We embrace the new NAGPRA regulations' potential to improve the processes by which museums work with tribes and communities, and we will use this opportunity to continue our own learning and advance our commitment to working in new ways."