Anthropology and Photography at the American Museum of Natural History

The handwritten label on the back of my photograph selected for this project reads: “Chicago World’s Fair Exhibit. Anthropological Dept. 1893.” In centuries prior, during a time without the globally interconnected technological communication systems that today make our world feel so small, world’s fairs and expositions showcased the latest in human accomplishment, discovery, and innovation. Ethnographic museums were both called on to fill exhibition halls and were founded out of the collections amassed during the exposition period. The heyday of expositions and museum anthropology occur simultaneously and reflect aspects of one another. This paper will explore world’s fairs in more general terms, as well as the specific details of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Following this background information, a closer look will be given to the Anthropology Hall at the 1893 Exposition in relation to my particular photograph. Utilizing primary and secondary sources, I seek to tease out as much information that my object, a photograph of an exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair, can tell about the science of anthropology at the end of the nineteenth century.