Museum Practice: Confronting the Past
The Aftermath
The new exhibition remains on display at the Field Museum today.
Taken from the exhibition: "Today, 50 of Hoffman's sculptures are back on display with a new narrative. This exhibition closely examines the nuance and beauty that defines the person and inspiration behind each sculpture. The exhibit takes a hard look at the 1933 exhibition. More than 80 years later, our cultural and scientific notions of race have changed - but the consequences of racial ideologies persist."
The Field Museum believes it is important for them, as an institution, to confront their past and to make positive changes for the future. One way they are doing this is by creating exhibitions that shed light upon past practices that, while considered correct at the time, we now understand as racist. They also actively work with members of different cultural communities from around the world so that they can tell their own stories. They hope that both approaches help encourage dialogue and give a voice to people who historically have been left silent.
The Field Museum and museums across the world have a long way to go in reckoning with the past and making necessary changes to support diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
The Field Museum recently started these examinations as an institution. Through self examination we can uncover biases and behaviors that perpetuate and reinforce racial structures. Natural history museums and the field of anthropology, have a responsibility to confront their roles as colonizing institutions.
The museum is currently renovating their Native North American Hall. They have an advisory committee of scholars and museum professionals from across the country, from diverse tribes and nations, who meet regularly with the Field exhibition team. The advisory team includes a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, the tribe on whose land the Field Museum stands. Also joining them is a representative from the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, a group that brings together most of the Native American organizations in the Chicago region.
Their hope is that visitors will gain a deeper understanding of Native peoples, their central role in shaping American history and contemporary life, and connections between the past and the present. Part of the process for uninstalling the exhibit was to reach out to individual communities and engage in dialogue about the objects on display. Although they are still developing specific content, topics may include family and individual narratives about urban Indian identity and life, land and environmental concerns, language and cultural diversity, artistic creativity, and change over time.
The Races of Mankind exhibition is just one of many examples of racism on display claiming to be science. This practice is unfortunately found in the histories of most educational and cultural institutions around the world. The important question is: what are these institutions doing about it?
What advice would you give to the Field Museum to address its history?
Do you think museums should revisit and address their pasts like the Field Museum did? Or, do you think museums should move forward from the past?