UIC, Field Museum team up to teach behind-the-scenes museum studies 

Every week during the spring semester, second-year student Gabriel Davis and several dozen other anthropology students met for class at one of Chicago’s landmarks — the Field Museum. 

How Museums Work, a 400-level class that’s part of a pilot curriculum between the UIC Department of Anthropology and the Field Museum, began in the 2023-24 academic year and is expected to continue in the upcoming academic year. 

For many years, UIC had occasionally offered some anthropology classes at the Field Museum, taught by museum curators. But those classes were just that – occasional, said Vincent LaMotta, clinical associate professor and director of undergraduate studies for anthropology at UIC.  

“What we are doing now, in contrast, is building a permanent joint curriculum that will ideally be offered on a regular, annual basis, and one that is meant to prepare students for careers in anthropology museums and other contexts where cultural heritage is a focus,” said LaMotta, who is also an adjunct curator at the museum.  

The curriculum starts well before the How Museums Work class, with 100-level general education courses open to all students: Students in those courses complete one of their weekly labs in Field Museum galleries under the supervision of museum staff, giving them an introduction to the world-class museum. LaMotta said during this past academic year, more than 1,400 UIC undergraduates visited the Field Museum through the program and toured galleries including the Robert R. McCormick Halls of the Ancient Americas and the Field Museum’s new Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories exhibit, in which Native American people tell their own stories. 

The How Museums Work class this spring was open to undergraduate and graduate-level students and was run by UIC Anthropology Professor William Parkinson, who also serves as curator of anthropology at the museum.   

Davis called the class “amazing.” He chose it because he felt it was a way to see the different “gears” museums must turn to operate. 

“You really get an inside look at the inner workings of the museum,” Davis said. “After taking this class, I would very much be interested in it.” 

In the field  

Davis and some of his classmates ventured beyond the museum’s galleries, too, for the kind of hands-on field work that entices many to join the anthropology and archaeology fields. With Parkinson, they participated in an archeological dig in the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie nature preserve in Wilmington, Illinois. The site was once the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant until, in 1985, archaeologists discovered pre-European Native American artifacts.  

“It’s really amazing to see the excitement when a student finds their first stone tool or piece of pottery — they realize they are holding something that nobody has seen in a millennium,” Parkinson said. 

Students can join the project as volunteers and work side-by-side with faculty from UIC and Field Museum staff. They get their hands dirty by learning excavation techniques and archaeological approaches to anthropological questions.

“It was a great learning experience, and working under Dr. Parkinson and getting a local experience was extremely fascinating,” Davis said.  “Archeology is my thing; it’s what I came to college to do, and it’s always been a dream of mine.” 

Grace Jones, who is a fourth-year student majoring in anthropology and French, said the class exposed her to what it’s like to work in a museum as large as the prestigious Field Museum early in her career. Being exposed to professionals and their real-life knowledge is invaluable, said Jones.

“One of the best parts of the class is having the opportunity to ask these people how they got to where they are in the field,” said Jones. 

During the class, museum professionals regularly spoke to the students about aspects of their jobs. They discussed their career paths, shared how they wound up working at the museum and offered advice. 

“They also talk about their day-to-day,” said Parkinson. “The real point is to give students an opportunity to see how the museum works from the inside out.” 

Experts and community members also have come in to discuss their work and share how the museum’s collections represent their communities. Recently, Native American artists from the Northwest United States visited with museum officials to gain historical insight. They visited the museum’s collection and spoke to the class about their work and how much traditional knowledge, and cultural history was wiped out when they were forced to assimilate in boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Photos: Jenny Fontaine/UIC

The museum classroom 

During a recent class, Erin Murphy, an assistant conservator in the anthropology department at the Field Museum, talked about her focus on the museum’s North American collection. Murphy said conservators walk a fine line as they strive to ensure an object’s physical preservation and respect its meaning within the community. 

“We want to preserve that significance. Why was it collected is a big question,” said Murphy. 

She told students that conservators are sought out for the hands-on technical decision-making skills they bring to materials. Murphy said conservators’ main day-to-day activities encompass examination of artifacts, documentation, treatment, research, education and outreach. 

This includes maintenance of the permanent exhibit and support of the collections team in caring for collections in storage and on display, Murphy said. 

She spoke to the students about her recent work, which included cleaning and caring for feathers used in Native American clothing and headdresses. She said conservators must protect the object from chemicals that will affect and possibly damage the item. 

“What we’re trying to do is stabilize and understand the object better, make it look its best, and show its best self to the world,” said Murphy. 

During a question-and-answer session after Murphy’s talk, Lukas Kerbyson, working on his master’s degree in biological anthropology, asked her what background a conservator should have. Chemistry is usually a requirement, Murphy said. 

Kerbyson said the focus of the class helped put his studies into context. 

“It helps take the lessons of museum structures and how museums work and the different jobs in a museum and show an anthropology student what they can do with that,” said Kerbyson. 

A real-world issue 

Museums worldwide, including the Field Museum, are grappling with a new understanding of cultural sensitivity that affects collections they’ve held for decades, even centuries. In the U.S., the recently updated Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, or NAGPRA, requires institutions receiving federal funds to repatriate certain Native American cultural items, including human remains and sacred objects to their respective tribes. 

Kerbyson also took another class this past semester, The Post NAGPRA Museum, which was entirely taught at the Field and part of the UIC-Field Museum curriculum. The class was taught by Christina Friberg, assistant curator of North American Anthropology at the Field Museum and a UIC Department of Anthropology lecturer.  

Students in the class helped develop ideas for a potential future exhibit while learning about the law. At the Field Museum, they can see how the repatriation act, which went into effect last year, is already affecting the museum’s collections.  

In one recent class, students visited the museum’s Robert R. McCormick Halls of the Ancient Americas and Alsdorf Hall of Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples galleries, where signs stated that parts of the collections were not being shown because the museum is in the middle of “legal and ethical reviews.” 

Master’s degree student Ian Stout said the class has helped them understand the implications of the law for museums and their collections. 

“If we were doing this class at a lecture hall or a classroom in the Behavioral Sciences Building at UIC, it doesn’t give you that concrete and almost explicit, ‘This is what’s going on here right now,’” said Stout. “You get a little bit of a behind-the-scenes of it all.”