Centering Culture in Museum Work/Centering the Museum in Culture Work

Abstract

T is a great time to be a museum anthropologist. Museums of all kinds are seeking insights into how better to engage their diverse publics and how to more creatively represent cultural issues. I can recount a few stories from my own experiences both at The Field Museum and with others to illustrate the point. One of the most intriguing recent experiences I had was working with renowned Chicagobased architect Jeanne Gang. Gang was commissioned as one of nine architects to participate in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and design a new development for a depressed vicinity in the Chicago Metropolitan Region. Gang knew of my work in Chicago and that we had done a study of Mexican immigrants social networks and arts practices. She consulted with me about what kind of housing and public spaces might work for working class Latino immigrants (now the fastest growing demographic in Chicago). Gang’s final designs and models (as sh own in the exhibit [Museum of Modern Art 2015]) incorporated flexible use spaces for extended family households and public recreational and multi-use spaces. MOMA’s exhibit, titled “Foreclosed,” is part of a growing trend by art museums to showcase social concerns through an aesthetic lens. In another example, the Queens Art Museum did an exhibit on housing foreclosures in Queens (Cohen 2009) and hired a “community organizer” to reach out to Queens residents to both see and comment on the exhibit. The community organizer could just as well have been an anthropologist. At The Field Museum, our anthropology practice has most recently focused on integrating standard museum multimedia and visual communications strategies as part of participatory CENTERING CULTURE IN MUSEUM WORK/ CENTERING THE MUSEUM IN CULTURE WORK