2006-2007 - The Field Museum

COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH – 2006 ANNUAL REPORT
In 1893 Edward E. Ayer, railroad tycoon and The Field Museum’s first president, sat in the office of
Marshall Field, trying to convince him to underwrite the creation of a permanent natural history museum
from the specimens assembled for the World’s Columbian Exposition. “From the perspective of natural
history, you have the privilege of being the educational host to the millions of people who will follow us in
the Mississippi Valley,” he argued, and urged Field to consider the region’s children, who “haven’t the
remotest opportunity of learning about the ordinary things they see and talk about and hear about every
day of their lives.” Three years later, Zoology curator Daniel Giraud Elliot, writing from present-day
Somalia on the first-ever Africa expedition mounted by a U.S. museum, recounted the expedition’s
successes to Museum Director Frederick Skiff, noting “we will make the Field Columbian Museum lick all
creation as a scientific museum and a Mecca for all naturalists to visit.”
110 years later, The Field Museum stands as a testament to those two distinct, yet intertwined visions: a
world-class institution of research, and a unique destination for public education. The opening lines of the
Museum’s mission statement put it well (if a little less colorfully):
The Field Museum is an educational institution concerned with the diversity and relationships in
nature and among cultures. It provides collection-based research and learning for greater public
understanding and appreciation of the world in which we live.
Education grounded in collections-based research. As the research institute within the Museum we
shorthand our scope as “Collections and Research,” but as scientists we are also deeply devoted to
education and training the next generation of scientists. Our education and outreach focus is visible
everywhere in the public museum, with 340,000 feet of exhibitions devoted to illuminating the natural
world for our millions of visitors. Field Museum scientists not only provide content for our exhibits and
public programs, they are also deeply involved in training tomorrow’s professional scientists. They do this
in the Museum, in university classrooms, at field sites, and at institutions both domestic and overseas.
Virtually every aspect of our work contributes to building a knowledge base about the natural and cultural
world. Every aspect of Collections and Research that we highlight in these pages year after year—the
research, the collections, the labs, fieldwork, grantsmanship—encompass education and training as
integral components. Further, our educational outreach is unique in its breadth among all Midwestern
academic institutions in that we reach the K–12, undergraduate, and graduate levels.
The primary drivers of our education efforts are the curators. Following in the footsteps of Elliot (an
academic “star” in his day) the Field is still home to a superb, internationally renowned curatorial faculty.
The term “faculty” is not merely honorific. Like their counterparts at a university, Field Museum curators
are expected to conduct research and publish, but also contribute to the overall education mission of the
institution. That includes acting as content specialists for our exhibitions (outreach to the general public),
and working with our Education Department (K–12 and adult and family programs) when called on to do
so. As at a university, they must perform at an outstanding level in order to gain tenure (career status for
their position). In 2006, several of our curators were promoted from Assistant Curator to the rank of
Associate Curator with tenure.
In Anthropology, Ryan Williams and Antonio Curet were both promoted to Associate Curator with tenure.
Ryan has been with the Museum for five years, during which time he has established himself as a major
authority in Andean archaeology. He has received two NSF grants and a number of other research
grants, published over 20 papers, and established a new major laboratory at the Museum (the Inductively
Coupled Plasma/Mass Spectrometry lab) for precise elemental analysis of artifacts. Antonio, who started
at the Museum in 2000, is a leading archaeologist of the Caribbean and is currently conducting
excavations at Tibes in southern Puerto Rico, the earliest ceremonial center of the Caribbean. He has
two recent books and numerous journal articles to his credit. His research has yielded new insights into
the social organization and economy of domestic groups and how they related to the development of
social inequality in ancient Puerto Rico. Ryan and Antonio are adjunct faculty at the University of Illinois
Anthropology department, and advise many Ph.D. students and teach many courses there, and have
been particularly committed to including students and interns in their fieldwork.
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