ntmdocents: Repatriation and Representation: Field Museum

By Melaina Leung

In the next section, I will discuss a new representation effort at the United States’ Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois that aims to amplify Native American voices after a long history of tension with Indigenous communities over the museum’s collections and disciplinary approaches.

The Field Museum’s History

The Field Museum was first created as a repository for the collected objects and artifacts showcased at the 1983 World’s Columbian Exposition.¹ Interestingly, the idea first came from Frederick Ward Putnam whose suggestion to do so appeared in The Chicago Tribune. Initially founded as the Columbian Museum of Chicago, the museum was renamed as the Field Columbian Museum after business tycoon Marshall Field donated $1 million. Known as an avid supporter of cultural and educational initiatives in Chicago, Field provided the funding after being persuaded by Edward E. Ayer, a collector of American Indian artifacts and local businessman who later became the museum’s first president.²

The Field Columbian Museum opened in Jackson Park’s Palace of Fine Arts on June 2, 1894.³ The Museum once again changed its name on November 10, 1905, this time to the Field Museum of Natural History to honor Marshall Field and emphasize the institution’s multidisciplinary focus on anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology. That same year began the search for a new location due to the Palace of Fine Arts’ deteriorating state. Though the museum moved out, this building was restored during the 1930’s and is now home to the Museum of Science and Industry. After six years of construction, the Field Museum’s current location in Grant Park opened in 1921. The museum has since been incorporated into downtown Chicago’s Museum Campus, which includes the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium.

Anthropology at the Field Museum

The Field boasts almost 40 million specimens and artifacts in its collections, but only 1% of these are on display to the public at any time.⁴ 1.5 million objects make up the museum’s collections focusing on human cultures, which are organized into the following subfields: Africa, Archaeological Science, Asia, Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Europe and the Near East, Mesoamerica and Central America, North America, The Pacific, and South America.⁵ From that, the items from the anthropology collection that are documented online number 237,652.⁶ Permanent anthropological exhibitions at the museum include Inside Ancient Egypt, the Cyrus Tang Hall of China, the Robert R. McCormick Halls of the Ancient Americas, the Regenstein Halls of the Pacific, and Africa.⁷

The museum’s anthropology collection was built up through acquisition trips and donations and purchases from other institutions. The initial collection was very much informed by Franz Boas’ concept of “salvage anthropology,” which emphasized the need to collect and save as many records and artifacts possible of the Native American cultures that were supposedly “dying out.” The cultures of Indigenous peoples were to be studied before they “disappeared.”

Representation at the Field Museum

Because of this focus on “salvage anthropology,” American Indians were seen as relics of the past and as the early “uncivilized” stages of human social development. Consequently, it was accepted that Native human remains and cultural objects be displayed along geologic specimens and taxidermied animals. The past representation of Native Americans at the Field thus was highly problematic, but like many other museums reckoning with their colonialist histories, the Field currently is revising their definition of “representation.” Traditionally, this meant that white American museum staff would have power over organizing and displaying Indigenous objects, and therefore, museum visitors would only learn about these cultures from outsider perspectives.

The present museum representation movement instead advocates that Indigenous peoples tell their own stories and histories. Native peoples should have the power to properly convey their perspectives on their own cultures and educate others about these viewpoints. On the part of museums, this means amplifying Indigenous voices and promoting the inclusion of community members. One example of how this has manifested into actual practice at the Field Museum is its current exhibit, Apsáalooke Women and Warriors.

Apsáalooke Women and Warriors at the Field Museum

Running from now until July 18, 2021, Apsáalooke Women and Warriors is the first major large-scale exhibition at the Field Museum to be curated by a Native American scholar, Nina Sanders.⁸ The Apsáalooke Nation, or the Crow, are an American Indian people of the Northern Plains. The exhibit highlights this community’s history, values, and beliefs, as well as its horsemanship, matriarchal structure, art, and tradition of “counting coup,” or performing acts of bravery.⁹

The exhibit is designed to be walked through in a clockwise direction, a movement symbolizing renewal and that mimics the Apsáalooke’s journey to self-actualization. This journey is split up into five sections: emergence and creation, journey (literal and spiritual), people (worldview, important figures, matriarchal structure, artistry, courtship), bravery and success, and conclusion (celebration).¹⁰ All labels are in both English and Spanish, while select ones are also in Apsáalooke.

In terms of its actual displays, Apsáalooke Women and Warriors features a variety of contemporary and historical objects. From the museum’s collections are seven war shields that have never before been on display, war shirts, elk tooth dresses, cradleboards, horse regalia, bags, and other historical cultural items. On the other hand, a tipi, beadwork, video animations, paintings, photographs, clothing, and music make up the 22 contemporary contributions from 18 Apsáalooke artists and collaborators.

The combination of both the historical and the modern-day is strongly linked to a major theme of the exhibit: challenging widely-accepted misconceptions of Native Americans. For example, one such stereotype is that the Apsáalooke and other American Indian communities belong to history, rather than here and now in the present-day.¹¹ Other topics explored are the egalitarian nature of Apsáalooke society and LGBTQ identities. For the former, the exhibit examines gender roles and how women were valued as mothers, keepers of culture, and central supports for both the family and larger community. For the latter, the exhibition discusses the three genders: bía (woman), bachee(í) (men), and batee (two-spirited), along with showcasing the life of a batee individual, Finds Them and Kills Them/Ohchiish.

Finally, in addition to the main exhibition at the Field, a companion show that ran from March 13 to August 21, 2020 was held at the University of Chicago’s Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.¹² While this second component of Apsáalooke Women and Warriors was unfortunately closed early due to the coronavirus pandemic, its opening was still celebrated with a parade led by dancers, drummers, elders, and participants on horseback, a gift exchange known as ammaakee/giveaway, and a private reception.¹³ Additionally, a virtual tour and list of gallery highlights were posted online.¹⁴ The last part of the curatorial project came on March 27: a book of the same name was published by the Neubauer Collegium and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.¹⁵

The Field Museum’s Other Representation and Collaboration Efforts¹⁶

While Apsáalooke Women and Warriors is a major step towards the museum’s goal of better representing indigenous stories and history, there have already been a number of other significant efforts that should also be acknowledged. For example, smaller exhibitions at the Field, 2013-2014’s Bunky Echo-Hawk: Modern Warrior and 2016-2019’s Drawing on Tradition: Kanza Artist Chris Pappan, had already introduced collaboration with Native co-curators and helped pave the way for this exhibit.

Bunky Echo-Hawk: Modern Warrior was co-curated by Bunky Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee and Yakama artist and activist, who selected the Pawnee objects and informational labels that were displayed alongside his own artworks featuring pop culture references and Native American imagery.¹⁷ Like in Apsáalooke Women and Warriors, the juxtaposition of historical and contemporary challenges stereotypes and emphasizes current social issues faced by Indigenous communities. However, two major differences are the exhibit’s focus on the Pawnee and Yakama, along with a larger emphasis on the resilience of Native cultural identity over time.¹⁸

Drawing on Tradition: Kanza Artist Chris Pappan was co-curated by Chris Pappan, a Chicago-based artist of Osage, Kaw, Cheyenne River Sioux, and European heritage.¹⁹ In this exhibition, the artist used several different mediums to engage with and question the frameworks in which the museum’s Native North American Hall represented American Indians in colonialist ways. The types of artwork include video, music, paintings, drawings, and transparencies of photographs and Plains ledger art, which all re-contextualize the already-present exhibits by including contemporary indigenous perspectives and underscore the limits of existing representation by the Field.

In addition to these smaller exhibits, the Field Museum held a land acknowledgement ceremony on October 26, 2018, which recognized that the museum resides on the traditional homeland of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi.²⁰ An expanded land acknowledgement can be found on the museum’s website.²¹ Finally, that same year, the Field initiated its long-awaited renovation of the museum’s Native North American Hall, which will be completed in 2021.²² This major overhaul is being done in collaboration with American Indian Center of Chicago and under the guidance of an advisory committee.²³ To better reflect contemporary issues and histories from Native American perspectives, the hall will feature rotational exhibitions co-curated by Indigenous scholars and community members. The number of Native staff at the museum will also be increased.

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Monday, September 28, 2020

Repatriation and Representation: Field Museum

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