Conscious Choice: Cultural Field Trips

May 2000

Cultural Field Trips

by Meg McGowan

Like most school children in the Chicago area, one of my first museum experiences was being herded onto a yellow school bus to traverse the crowded expressway and be deposited with my brown-bag lunch at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive. Along with the diesel fumes I absorbed on those field trips, I absorbed a world perspective that glorified science and industry. I was well into my adult life before it occurred to me that this great cultural treasure of Chicago was peddling a paradigm from just after the turn of the century — the idea that we were living in a "Century of Progress," thanks be to science and industry.

Museums reflect what we value, and by their very existence they both lend substance to those values and pass them along to future generations. Thus, the experience of visiting a museum presents a unique opportunity to examine not only artifacts and displays, but the assumptions that brought it into existence. Major museums, of course, tend to represent dominant culture values. What some of the lesser known museums offer is an alternative view of what should be preserved, examined, wondered at, and valued.

The Peace Museum was founded in 1981. It is the first and only museum in the United States dedicated to promoting the cause of peace. Originally, the museum’s goal was to "foster a greater awareness of the global impact of war and peace through the arts." That goal has been expanded in the past few years to include a greater focus on the problems of violence in American society such as domestic violence, youth violence, and gangs. Currently, "The mission of the Peace Museum. . .is to be an educational institution that motivates children, teens, and adults to achieve creative solutions to the problem of violence. The focus of the museum’s exhibitions, programs and workshops are to increase the understanding of the history and practice of peace, and the capacity of adults and children to effectively use non-violent conflict resolution skills."

Internationally recognized for the excellence of its presentations and programs, the Peace Museum holds a collection of more than ten thousand peace-related artifacts and artwork including original paintings, sculptures, drawings, anti-war quilts, musical instruments, rare photographs, and posters. Exhibits change quarterly. Their current exhibit is entitled "Messages for the Millennium: One Hundred Days of Mail Art."

The Peace Museum’s possible complement, the National Vietnam Veteran’s Art Museum, is the only museum in the world with a permanent collection that approaches the subject of war from the personal, rather than the ideological, perspective. All of the art displayed at the museum has been created by the men and women who served in the Vietnam War, including artists from the United States, Australia, Cambodia, and Thailand, as well as North and South Vietnam. The art housed here is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to perceive and sustain itself on brief glimpses of unexpected beauty and to transform incomprehensible experiences of crisis, chaos, and pain into words and images that convey the emotional experience of war, unveiled from political rhetoric and media spin.

A newly arriving exhibit entitled "Above & Beyond" will be the only permanent Vietnam memorial other than the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. to list all the war’s dead and all those who still are missing in action. Scheduled to be completed by Veteran’s Day, 2000, the ten- by forty-foot sculpture will feature more than 58,000 dog tags suspended from the ceiling on one-inch centers. Swaying in the breeze, sounding like wind chimes, the dead will again move and speak, joining survivors in breaking the silence that has shrouded their experiences for so long. The new installation is expected to be eerily discomfiting; but then, there is no comfortable distance from which to observe any of the art at this museum — a reminder in itself that no comfortable distance exists from which we can observe war.

In a testament to hope and activism, however, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum celebrates Addams’s life work as a peace advocate and social welfare pioneer. Hull-House, where Addams and Ellen Gates Star began their social settlement, is the second oldest house in Chicago. Acutely aware of the economic disparities that surrounded her and the often desperate conditions of the poor, Addams worked from Hull House to improve working conditions and the overall environment for laborers, women, and children. Her aim was not to assimilate the immigrant population she served, but rather to promote understanding between the different generations and cultures. Thus, she developed opportunities for education and exposure to the arts while at the same time campaigning for protective laws and programs. Today, the museum that commemorates this work is an internationally recognized symbol of multicultural understanding, educational innovation, social service, urban research, and social reform.

The DuSable Museum of African American History is one of many museums in Chicago that offer the historical perspective of a particular ethnic group or culture. It was the first museum in the country — and still is the only major independent cultural institution in Chicago — established to preserve and interpret the experiences and achievements of African-Americans. Founded by Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs in her home in 1961, the museum moved to its present location in 1973. Currently, it is home to more than 15,000 pieces of art and historical memorabilia. In addition, it routinely hosts programs featuring the performing arts, as well as special exhibitions, workshops, and lectures.

The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum is the nation’s largest Mexican museum and home of an immensely popular Day of the Dead exhibit each fall. The Spertus Museum, part of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, features permanent and changing exhibitions that reflect the creativity and diversity of Jewish culture. Other local museums foster understanding and preservation of immigrant cultures that have all but disappeared into Chicago’s mainstream: the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, the Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, the Swedish American Museum Center, the Polish Museum of America, and the Ukrainian National Museum.

Apart from these more ethnographic museums, The Oriental Museum diplays art & artifacts from the ancient Middle East. Exhibits include antiquities from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Israel and Syria.

Garfield Farm Museum, located an hour west of Chicago, is the only intact, 1840s living history farm and former inn in Illinois. It consists of 281 acres (including 20 acres of unplowed prairie), and three original buildings, which are being restored by volunteers and donors. In addition to being an actual example of the rapidly vanishing independent farm, complete with artifacts and implements from the 1840s, the Garfield Farm preserves a way of life that connected families to each other and to the earth.

Garfield Farm is a living museum and a working farm; one of its primary goals is to conserve genetic diversity in both plants and animals. Gardens there are planted with antique flowers and heirloom vegetables, and the livestock includes historic breeds of oxen, sheep, and poultry. For the past thirteen years, Garfield Farm has hosted a rare breeds livestock show in May in conjunction with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. It has also held an annual Heirloom Horticultural Show each year for the past decade. The farm is currently raising funds to purchase an adjacent ninety-nine-acre family farm that would permanently protect the Garfield Farm from encroaching development. The seven buildings on that parcel of land would provide support facilities and new avenues for interpretation, programming and revenue sources.

Further afield in Collinsville, eight miles from downtown St. Louis, is one of only seventeen designated World Heritage Sites in the United States — Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Huge mounds dominate this landscape. Monk’s Mound, the largest, rises one hundred feet high and covers over fourteen acres — more area than any of the Egyptian pyramids. It is the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas. The site and its interpretive center offer visitors a depth of historical perspective that is not often found in America.

Approximately 1,200 years ago a group of Native Americans (named the Mississipians by archeologists) resided on the site, in a city considered to be the most sophisticated prehistoric Indian civilization north of Mexico. At its peak, around 1150 A.D., the population is estimated to have included between 10,000 and 20,000 citizens.

For five or six centuries, Cahokia Mounds was the site of a thriving agriculturally-based metropolis. Interestingly, it is not known what eventually caused the city’s demise. Theories include issues that still resonate today, such as poor sanitation, shortages of fuel and food, draining natural resources, and dramatically altering wildlife habitats through deforestation.

Today, life-size dioramas illustrate scenes from the Mississippian’s daily life. Solstice celebrations are held at "Woodhenge," a reconstructed circular sun calendar of forty-eight large, evenly spaced wooden posts, named for its functional similarity to Stonehenge in England.

As the millennium has turned again, a new and much heralded museum has opened — the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. The museum was built on an ancient Lake Michigan sand dune across from the Lincoln Park Zoo and is the new home of the Chicago Academy of Sciences.

The museum’s focus is the ecology of the midwest and many exhibits provide hands-on educational opportunities for visitors of any age. On average, over 2,000 children from elementary school to high school visit the museum every month. Exhibits range from the Butterfly Haven, where visitors can walk among hundreds of species of midwest butterflies, to a seventy-five-foot model of the Chicago River in the Water Lab, where visitors learn the impact of rivers and lakes on daily life. There is a Children’s Gallery where children of ages three to eight can learn about the environment and the museum has a 5,000-square-foot space for temporary exhibits. (You can read some in-depth articles about the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Environs.)

Perhaps the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum will be a portent of the values we are bringing into this next century and the new millennium. Perhaps it is an indication that our understanding of progress has been profoundly changed as well. It’s a pleasant possibility — almost as pleasant as a visit.

Resources

Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, 6500 Pulaski Road, 773-582-6500

Cahokia Mounds, Collinsville, Illinois, 618-346-5160

The Dusable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Place, 773-947-0600

Garfield Farm Museum, LaFox, Illinois, 630-584-8485

Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, 168 N. Michigan Avenue, 312-726-1234

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted Street, 312-413-5353

Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1852 W. 19th Street, 312-738-1503

National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, 1801 S. Indiana Avenue, 312-326-0270

The Oriental Institute Museum, 1155 E. 58th Street, 773-702-1062

The Peace Museum, 314 W. Institute Place, 312-440-1860

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Fullerton Parkway & Cannon Drive, 773-755-5100

The Polish Museum of America, 984 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 773-384-3352

Spertus Museum, 618 S. Michigan Avenue, 312-922-9012

Swedish American Museum Center, 5211 N. Clark Street, 773-728-8111

Ukrainian National Musum, 721 N. Oakley Boulevard, 312-421-8020

Addresses are in Chicago unless otherwise noted.

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