In 1964 the Amsterdam institution received a donation of Southwestern Indian artifacts from A.H. (Heleen) Melk (1888-1973), popularly known as sister Melk. She had trained in patient care and worked as a teacher at the municipal hospital in The Hague. In 1928-29 she attended a course in nursing at Columbia University on a scholarship, probably from the Rockefeller Foundation. She published a standard work on nursing that was revised and reprinted repeatedly after the war (Melk 1931). She was also actively engaged in the establishment and development of a professional national organization for nurses. During the war she kept a low profile because of her Jewish friend Kora Cosmann with whom she shared accommodation (Romein-Verschoor 1973; Richter-Uitdenboogaardt 1974). In the early 1960s she visited the United States again, probably to learn about developments in nursing in American hospitals. Her route included the Southwest where she obtained as gifts or through purchase some Navajo jewelry and five weavings, including two pictorial blankets, woven from wool dyed with natural colors (series TMA 3448).<BR> <BR> In 1997 the Royal Tropical Institute transferred its non-core ethnographic museum collections, including those from North America, about sixty specimens, to the Museon in The Hague (see below). Only the Navajo textiles of Sister Melk remained behind.