Time: Spring, Junior Year
The Class: English Junior Seminar
The Assignment: To write an analysis paper on an object in the Field Museum, presumably also citing the texts we read in class prior to visiting the museum.
Final Draft
Semi-Subterranean: Forgotten Objects in the Field Museum
In Do Museums Still Need Objects, Steven Conn describes the declining role of objects in museums: โIn some cases, objects continue to play a central role in the function of the museum; in others, their role is clearly a reduced one; in still others, objects have virtually disappeared from galleries, replaced by other didactic devices โ audio-visual, interactive technologies, and so onโ (Conn 20).
The Ancient Americas exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago is a concerted effort in this latter form of modern museology. As the introductory sign explains, the exhibit is not organized chronologically because โThe Ancient Americas is a story of diversity and change โ not progress.โ1 The many informational panels and videos that one would expect are accompanied by interviews with descendants of these ancient cultures, in order to provide the visitor with as close to first-hand knowledge as possible. Interactive games, second-person narratives, and atmospheric soundtracks playing in every room all aim to immerse the visitor in the cultures about which they are learning.
It is not until leaving The Ancient Americas and stepping into the Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples exhibit, however, that one truly feels as if one has travelled back in time, albeit to the recent past. It is the classical image of a museum exhibit: dimly lit, mostly comprising row upon row of cases, each filled with twenty or more artifacts with barely descriptive labels: โArrowhead,โ โChild’s Doll,โ etc.2 Almost no attempt is made to contextualize these objects.
The rows of cases are occasionally broken up by larger exhibit pieces. One of these is the โEskimo Semi-Subterranean House,โ itself contained in glass, cut in half to allow the visitor to peer inside, though the dim light makes it difficult to see much of anything. The house is filled with various objects, and a figure sits on the floor. A label on the side describes how the house is designed to keep out the cold, and provides a map and key of its contents.
This object brings up many questions. First, what is the purpose of the object, in and of itself, as a museum piece? The initial, perhaps romantic, view of anthropological exhibits was that, โ[p]rovided they were collected, organized, and arranged properly, anthropological objects could convey knowledge about the people who produced them, standing in for the cultures they represented in museum exhibitsโ (Conn 30). The โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ might not, in this context, be seen to represent a culture as a whole, but being that it contains many objects within itself (33, according to the key), it can be seen as representing, or attempting to represent, a significant piece of a culture.
The house fails in this attempt at representation, and rather spectacularly. To begin with, what culture is it supposed to representing? The label says โEskimo,โ a term which refers to any number of peoples native to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland; it is also a term considered offensive by many of those peoples. Even assuming, generously, that these cultures share strong similarities or, cynically, that to the exhibit’s curators they are all the same, how much of that culture is actually represented? As mentioned previously, the lighting makes it difficult to see inside; while the objects contained within are named on the label (โSpoon,โ โTray,โ etc.),3 there is no way to know if there is anything culturally significant about them (inventiveness, artistic design, religious meaning, etc.). Apart from that, all we know is that โEskimosโ built houses to keep out the cold.
Donald Collier and Harry Tschopik, Jr., presented a different view of exhibits, saying โthat exhibits, through their visual appeal, excite interest and imagination, and offer experiences not found in books. Even if exhibits can never tell the whole story โฆ they reach many persons who will not read [academic books on anthropology]โ (qtd. in Conn 33). The voyeuristic design of the โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ certainly seems to aim for this visually-centered experience. But even from this perspective it fails to achieve its goal. Recall, again, the dim lighting. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the house is intended to be life-sized; regardless when looks inside, especially through the window specifically positioned to give the visitor a view down the tunnel that forms the entrance to the house, one is struck more by a feeling of claustrophobia than a feeling of homey comfort that the exhibit seems to be intended to communicate about this โtypical Eskimo dwelling.โ4 It is unlikely that a visitor would get anything of value from this object that they could not get from a book.
There is, perhaps, a third perspective, combining the two just discussed, that would design exhibits based on what the public wants to, or should, know. This is arguably a significant part of the modern approach; provide more information, but aim for breadth, not depthโ the public isn’t interested in esoterica. The โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ fails in this approach as well. The top three Google searches beginning with โDo Inuit…โ are: โDo Inuit still use igloos;โ โDo Inuit live in Alaska;โ and โDo Inuit still exist.โ5 The โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ does not answer any of these questions, nor does it address any of the cultural misconceptions implied by them, although both of those functions are well within its purview. Nor, as previously mentioned, does it address the issue of terminology (i.e. Eskimo vs. Inuit). In this it fails to convey the knowledge public wants and, arguably, the knowledge the public should have.
One should also consider the โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ in the context of the rest of the museum. As discussed at the beginning of this paper, the Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples exhibit is bordered on one side by The Ancient Americas exhibit. On the other side, as of April, 2015, is a special exhibit on Bunky Echo-Hawk, a Native American artist whose work serves as social commentary on the United States’ treatment of its native peoples. These exhibits are highly modernized: Both have more information and more interactivity, and both address the โchallenge to the very legitimacy of the anthropological discipline by the subjects of its researchโ (Conn 33). Both are also clearly advertised in the main hall of the museum.
This does not seem to be coincidence. โIn some natural history museums,โ writes Conn, โanthropology has become something of an embarrassment โฆ in many ways and in many places these collections and exhibits have languishedโ (34). Meanwhile, as museums are more and more commercially driven, the goal is to design โan anthropological ‘blockbuster’โ (34). The Ancient Americas and Bunky Echo-Hawk: Modern Warrior are clearly attempts at this. The โEskimo Semi-Subterranean Houseโ and the rest of the Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples exhibit, meanwhile, languish in the dark while the museum decides what, if anything, to do with them.
1 The Ancient Americas. Exhibit. The Field Museum, Chicago, IL.
2 Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples. Exhibit. The Field Museum, Chicago, IL.
3 โEskimo Semi-Subterranean House.โ Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples. Exhibit. The Field Museum, Chicago, IL.
4 โEskimo Semi-Subterranean House.โ Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples. Exhibit. The Field Museum, Chicago, IL.
5 Retrieved April 23, 2015. Google will not auto-complete โDo Eskimos,โ likely due to the (mostly correct) perception that it is politically incorrect. โInuitโ was used here as the next-most generally used and generally known term.
Bibliography
Conn, Steven. Do Museums Still Need Objects? Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania, 2010. 20-37. Print.
Grade: Your guess is as good as mine, but feels like an A, right?
Professor’s Comments: I honestly don’t remember.
My Comments: Sure it’s got the tone of a snarky restaurant review rather than an academic paper, but I think the analysis is solid. If there’s one consistent theme to this series it’s “do you whatever you have to to make writing the paper interesting for yourself (barring any you know will get you a failing grade.)” If anything I kind of wish I’d had the leeway/time/skill/lack-of-social-anxiety to take this in an even more journalistic direction and actually interview people at the museum, both visitors and staff (I did take a couple journalism classes, I was not very good at it.)
I am a little uncomfortable with the repeated usage of the word (you know which one), but as it’s not quite at the level of a slur it seems best to leave it uncensored, since it is key to my critique of the exhibit (and I think my professor might’ve docked me if I’d censored it; self-censorship is controversial subject in academia, and I had another professor (not white) expressly forbid us from censoring slurs (yes, even that one) in quotations. Also, this is only tangentially related, but in one of my journalism classes I used “they” to refer to a hypothetical person whose gender was neither known nor relevant, and my professor (not a man) changed it to “he.”) I do think I was under the impression at the time that some tribes were ok with the term, looking into it now it seems more that there are some contexts in which they simply haven’t found a widely-agreed upon replacement for referring to groups not covered by other, more appropriate umbrella terms, so the word is used more out of lack of better options than because people are actually ok with it. But again, since it’s not quite a slur and I myself am not using it to refer to indigenous people but only to refer to the word itself and its usage in the exhibit, I think it’s justifiable. Open to being wrong about that though.
No Pre-Production material for this one, I know I took notes at the museum and I must have gone through the text for quotes but other than that I mostly just remember this being pretty easy to write.
