I’m not exaggerating to say that exploring the Field Museum recently felt like stepping into the sun after a long winter. Between finals and traveling, I hadn’t been to a museum in a while. This visit was, to borrow a phrase, the first time this summer where I was met with something commensurate with my capacity for wonder. 

With that introduction, I’ll admit that I don’t know how to write about household-name institutions like this. Everything that could be said about the Field Museum probably already has been said by people older and wiser than I am. But I want to get better at writing about museums, and I think this is a good place to start.

The Field Museum is huge, and I had no plan going in. It was raining in Chicago as it often is these days, and I had woken up overwhelmed by the desire to go do something interesting and modern. The atrium of this massive complex does not disappoint. You’re greeted immediately by Maximo the Titanosaur, and I am simply not enough of a poet or a scientist to describe how big this skeleton is. Imagining it alive and moving was an exercise in humility. I spent a few minutes walking back and forth underneath it, mostly to get my bearings, but also to feel like a child again. I didn’t even grab a map; I had all day here and no one was waiting on me. I went to the first exhibit hall I spotted: Ancient Americas. 

The strategy the Field Museum employs for crowd control is to force all visitors into a labyrinthine two-way street. This exhibit, impressively, just kept going. I gave up on finding the exit in time to beat the lunch rush somewhere around Tenochtitlan. What fascinated me, perhaps more than most visitors, was the visible evidence of changing museum standards. Several displays had been covered with black tarps and signs that read “these cases have been covered in consideration of ongoing legal and ethical reviews related to the display and repatriation of certain cultural items subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).” If you didn’t write your undergraduate thesis on museum standards and global repatriation efforts, NAGPRA is a 1990 law which requires federally funded museums to return Indigenous human remains and cultural items to the stewardship of their tribes of origin. The problem with this law has always been that it puts the burden of effort on the tribes themselves, who have to dedicate untold man-hours to researching the provenance of museum objects and finding ways to “prove” who they really belong to. This can sometimes be genuinely impossible, these artifacts seldom have a perfect paper trail. I admit that I was skeptical of these signs at first. I thought it was at best virtue-signaling and at worst a way of pointing fingers. It wasn’t their fault these artifacts weren’t on display, it was those pesky, woke-y laws. Blame Bush Sr. 

My experience with far less cooperative museums made me cynical. For every success story with repatriation, there are countless other artifacts gathering dust in a vault somewhere. I tried to brush off the feeling. The exhibit was great otherwise. I saw mammoth tusks and re-sharpened spear heads. There were plenty of replica objects for visitors to touch, a whole gallery of Moche pots that had faces on them, and enough buttons to push for kids to be entertained. Some displays asked you to imagine “if you lived in X time in X place…” with little second-person descriptions of daily events in ancient cities. The language here effectively humanized these ancient peoples. Labels were specific, carefully-worded, and informative. There was no passive voice about how Europeans carried out the genocide of Indigenous peoples, which is something I always look out for. 

Then I rounded a corner and entered a new gallery hall. A sign at the entrance read:

“This hall reflects the Field Museum’s former curatorial practices. These practices spoke on behalf of the cultures and people related to the items on exhibit, often using harmful language and misrepresenting Indigenous people. We plan to co-create a new exhibition with the communities whose heritage is displayed here and ask for your understanding while we work to establish more respectful practices. We are grateful for your support of our efforts.”

It is hard to describe how much this exhibit hall felt like stepping into the past, how much it showed the difference between an old-fashioned museum and modern one. I’ve been in plenty of galleries that follow these practices, but not one that so startlingly shows what’s changed. The displays had that old, cabinet-of-curiosities feel to them. They were crowded, upright, and had minimal interpretive text. And then there was the language the gallery did have. These labels contained sentences like: “through trade with the white man, Indian peoples eventually acquired guns,” which is not only outdated and patronizing but also doesn’t tell the reader anything new. Other flaws in the wording here were more nebulous. There was an overall tone of judgment, of comparing these cultures to a Western standard and finding them lacking. The line that’s still stuck in my head, though, is this: “the introduction of commercially dyed European fabrics influenced the work of Salish weavers.” There’s that passive voice I’m always worried about. Not a single label I found in this gallery spoke about genocide at all. 

I was already on board with the Field Museum by this point. I don’t know how long ago these cases were designed or these labels written, but I was already impressed by their understanding that they needed to change. I then rounded the corner into a new exhibit: Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. I really wish I knew about this exhibit when I was writing that aforementioned thesis. This could have been my proof that a better world is possible, that you can display Indigenous art without talking over anyone or desecrating anything sacred. The arts and cultures of several different tribes were on display, mostly with interpretive texts that were written in the artists’ own words. There was a life-size recreation of a Pawnee earth lodge, labels that discussed why Native art is often excluded from the modern art world, and a screen showcasing the flags of the nations that contributed to the exhibit. Perhaps most importantly, there was a plaque on the wall which identifies the names and affiliations of the Native people who were consulted for this exhibition. Despite what the curators might like you to believe, no museum exhibit is created in a vacuum. Labels, brochures, design choices— they’re all made by people. This form of attribution is not only essential for the accountability of an institution like the Field Museum, it’s also a show of authenticity. Native people can, and do, speak for themselves. 

These exhibits are fantastic. As your resident museum nerd, I give them the best recommendation. 

It was 3 p.m. when I finished exploring that particular exhibit hall. Not counting my brief visit to the museum’s extortionate restaurant, I spent four hours in there. What did I do with my remaining two hours of exploration? I went and saw SUE the T. rex, obviously. 

I’ll spare you most of my overthought opinions on Evolving Planet, the prehistoric natural history exhibit. It was very well done. The same strategy of guiding visitors through time and space by channeling them through a serpentine hallway was in effect here, and I really loved how viewers got to explore each era of life on Earth (I especially liked the table of trilobite fossils). Each major extinction event was highlighted by a room with ominous red lighting and info on what environmental factors caused the collapse. This led to a great moment of exiting through a room that explained how we are currently living through another extinction event, this one caused solely by human action. There was a counter on the wall that told you how many species had gone extinct since the museum opened that morning. 

SUE the T. rex has been the star of the Field Museum for 26 years at this point, and it was a good decision to move them from the atrium to their own special gallery. I first learned about the world’s most complete T. rex fossil sometime in elementary school, and seeing it was immediately on my bucket list. I happened to catch the projector show, which illuminated which parts of the fossil display were artificial and told a brief history of how the bones were uncovered. It ended with a spotlight that turned SUE’s shadow into the Jurassic Park logo, which was a nice touch. An adorably corny tilted stand explained that the fossil’s name was SUE, they use they/them pronouns (since we don’t actually know if SUE was male or female), and their interests include Jeff Goldblum and Chicago sports. SUE was dazzling, the exhibit was fantastic, exit through the gift shop. 

I saw probably less than a third of the Field Museum on this all-day visit. This is the kind of museum with enough time and resources to ensure a great experience, to stay on top of every curatorial innovation, and to license a Pokémon-based fossil exhibit (which was sadly sold out). I don’t really need to tell you that even I, as someone with an eye for the smallest detail, found it worth the price of admission. This place reminded me of the diversity of what museums offer to the public. I’m biased toward art museums and how they allow us to learn through introspection and imagination, but I appreciate how natural history museums offer something much more concrete. Here, we learn by exploration. We could all use a reminder of how wide the world is, how real life is often stranger than fiction. 

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