Anthropology and Photography at the American Museum of Natural History

INTERNATIONAL WORLD’S FAIRS

In 1851, the Crystal Palace Exposition held in London sparked the trend of international world’s fairs that would continue with great frequency up until the First World War (Cawelti 1968: 317; Hinsley 1991: 344). Hinsley describes international expositions as “carnivals of the industrial age” that “celebrated the ascension of civilized power over nature and primitives” (1991: 344-345). Additionally, fairs influenced economic and cultural structures by promoting mass consumption of products and influencing public taste in areas such as architecture (Rydell 1984: 2; Cawelti 1968: 318). Rydell cites the sociological concept of the symbolic universe – “a structure of legitimation that provides meaning for social experience…placing all collective events in a cohesive unity that includes past, present, and future” – as one of the major functions of world’s fairs (1984: 2). International expositions were also effective tools of hegemony through promoting a country’s ideals as reality (Rydell 1984: 2).

International expositions served as important markers of progress, a concept that the West has treasured and held in high esteem for centuries. At the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, President William McKinley remarked:

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise, and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student. Every exposition, great or small, has helped this onward step (Rydell 1984: 4).

Progress was the underlying current of early anthropology. Theorists proposed models of cultural evolution from savagery, to barbarism, to the pinnacle of civilization (“Fair”). These ideas were also propagated in the forum of the fairs (Rydell 1984: 5).

In order for expositions to become a reality, already established institutions were called upon to donate time and materials. The Smithsonian provided parts of its collection to numerous expositions in spite of the negatives faced by the museum, including the demands on their staff and the depletion and damage of their collections, because “the opportunity for popular education [was] too important to be neglected” (Rydell 1984: 6-7). Other scholars expressed similar sentiments and, in combination with economic and political interests, fairs remained popular endeavors for decades.

THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, 1893

Chicago was the second largest city at the end of the nineteenth century. On February 24, 1890, it was chosen over New York City by the House of Representatives to host the World’s Columbian Exposition (Muccigrosso 1993: 15). The fair was to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas and the spirit of colonialism, and took on the motto of “Not Matter, But Mind; Not Things, But Man” (Trachtenberg 1982: 212). A single board, consisting of mainly Chicago businessmen, controlled the fair’s organization and utilized New York City architects to construct the buildings that sprawled over an area four times larger than previous expositions (Cawelti 1968: 320; Trachtenberg: 1982: 211; Shaw 1992: 6). Jackson Park on the south side of Chicago was transformed into the White City, which included 200 buildings and outdoor spaces housing exhibits relating to everything from agriculture to women (Shaw 1992: 6-7; “Impact”). The exhibition, as previously mentioned, was expected to bring economic growth to the area in the form of jobs and tourism dollars, and to rally the citizens around city leaders’ visions for the area (“Setting”).
For six months (May 1, 1893 through October 30, 1893), the White City next to Lake Michigan stood as “a rich and impressive celebration of American achievement” (Cawelti 1968: 334). George Brown Goode saw the fair as “an illustrated encyclopedia of humanity,” which would illustrate “the steps of progress of civilization and its arts in successive centuries, and in all lands up to the present time” (Hinsley 1991: 346). During the period the exposition was open, a total of 27,529,400 adults and children attended, which at the time equated to half of the nation’s population (Rydell 1984: 40; “Impact”). Wilbur O. Atwater, of the exposition’s Agriculture Department, felt that the Chicago World’s Fair must “teach not only to our people, but to the world, what a young republic, with all the crudeness of youth, but heir to the experience of the ages, has done in its brief past, is doing in the present, and hopes to do in the greater future for its people and for mankind” (Rydell 1984: 7). The fair was a rare opportunity for Americans who could not afford foreign travel to experience the world and the Anthropology Hall and the Midway Plaisance provided much of the exposure to the exotic that visitors encountered.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY HALL

The Department of Ethnology at the World’s Columbian Fair was headed by Frederick Ward Putnam of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. With a budget of $100,000, he set out to “make an important contribution to science” with “a perfect exhibition of the past and present peoples of America,” the collection of which would eventually serve as the foundation of the Field Museum (“Fair”). The Anthropology Hall, featuring 50,000 objects from all over the world in an exhibition titled “Anthropology: Man and His Work,” was the last aspect of the fair to be completed, opening a month after the rest of the exposition (“World” 1893: 11; “Fair;” Hinsley 1991: 349). Putnam enlisted the help of Franz Boas and George Amos Dorsey to curate the 160,000 square feet of exhibition space and adjacent outdoor space, and supervised American expeditions to collect archaeological and anthropology material (“Fair;” Hinsley 1991: 349). Putnam’s assistant, Harlan Ingersoll Smith, expressed the overriding intention of the Anthropology Hall: “From the first to the last, the exhibits of this department will be arranged and grouped to teach a lesson; to show the advancement of evolution of man” (Rydell 1984: 57).

Loosely associated with the Hall was the Midway Plaisance. Originally planned by Putnam to be an outdoor cultural education space featuring accurate native villages, it evolved into more of a profit-driven amusement park when the exposition’s organizers’ focus shifted. Putnam acknowledged the inherent fascination and popularity in human exhibits at previous fairs, much as Boas did with the use of life groups in museum settings, and the added opportunity to showcase accurate cultural knowledge (Hinsley 1991: 347-348). The mile long stretch included attractions like the Ferris Wheel and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, as well as cultural village attractions like A Street in Cairo, the majority of which charged an extra fee (“Impact”). Marian Shaw, a Chicago area reporter, described resident performers of the Midway as “living representatives of various Indian tribes, living as their forefathers did before the white man invaded these shores. Here in their wigwams or bark huts they cook and sleep, carry on their games and dances” (1992: 25-26). Boas used his Northwest Coast village as an opportunity to collect data and had the occupants perform rituals and dances for a professional photographer and the public (Hinsley 1991: 349). In his report published in American Anthropologist, William Henry Holmes remarked that the Midway Plaisance with its variety of exotic entertainment provided “ample diversion” for the International Congress of Anthropology (1893: 434). Hinsley describes the Midway visitor experience as “window-shopping in the department store of exotic cultures” and stresses the commodification of humans at the fair, linking these aspects to Boas’ overall diminishing faith in public anthropology (1991: 355; 362-363).

The official catalogue that accompanied the Hall, sold for fifteen cents, reads on the back cover: “Buy the Official Catalogues. They are the only books by which you can locate the Exhibits in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” It includes background information about the Hall, a map, a breakdown of the different sections (i.e. archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnography, etc.), and several essays from curators. There is a part explaining how to locate exhibits: each section has consecutively numbered exhibits and “as far as practicable each exhibit has a card attached to it bearing the name of the country or section and the words ‘Official Catalogue Number,’” which corresponds to the catalogue. It assures you that “by following the above plan, the visitor will experience no difficulty in locating the exhibitor or his exhibit,” however, “no attention should be paid to any numbers which may be affixed to the exhibits except those appearing on cards in the form given above” (“World” 1893: 10). I, personally, had to reread the directions several times to grasp the system and can only imagine how confusing it must have been in person. A large portion of the catalogue is devoted to information relating to the exhibits. I was able to locate only one entry related to the “C 12” exhibit depicted in my photograph. It listed the donor and general origin, but goes no further than describing it as “ethnological material from New Caledonia and other Pacific Islands.”

MY PHOTOGRAPH

Negative Number 337268 is a capture of the ground floor of the Anthropology Hall. A banner reading South Sea Islands hangs in the background and the “C 12” sign allowed me to locate the exhibit on the map provided in the original catalogue. The cases are made of wood and glass, and some resemble the cases in the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, as well as those we saw in the tour of the anthropology department’s storage room. The back of a set of cases in the foreground appears to have a painted landscape mural, though it is uncertain as to how it fits in with the exhibit. Perhaps it was used as a stage backdrop for live cultural performances. Throughout the image there are drying puddles of water, suggesting either some exposure to the elements or evidence of site maintenance.

The photo captures only a small fraction of what was display in the hall, however thousands of objects are present. Cases are packed to the brim, support poles have artifacts tacked to them, and baskets are strung across the ceiling. Canoes sit atop the larger cases and pottery is piled on the shelves of lower cases; even the sides of cases are used for displaying artifacts. Objects are organized by type, such as the case of poison arrows and the clustering of statues and totem poles. Labeling is almost nonexistent, though there appears to be small texts posted below the hide clothing display.

Several aspects of this photograph are very representative of museum anthropology of the late nineteenth century. The emphasis on the Hall catalogue is similar to the system Boas utilized in AMNH. The scarce labeling used in the Northwest Coast Hall referred to entries in larger volumes where extended information was available about the objects (Notes). The heavy wooden and glass cases keep with the style of the time, a style that would later be abandoned for more modern and sleek designs. The organization of objects by type was the preferred style of presentation up until Boas argued for tribal/geographical organization during his time at AMNH several years after the exposition (Jacknis 1988: 79). The sheer amount of artifacts overcrowding the cases is also typical of the era. Cluttered cases persisted in Boas’ Hall at AMNH and there are several possible reasons for this, including lack of storage space, differing ideas of “crowded,” and the paradigm of diffusionism that utilized multiple copies of similar objects to exemplify the transfer of ideas between cultures (Notes; Jacknis 2004: 228).

The World’s Columbian Exposition, in its short life, left a profound impact on Chicago and all the fairs that followed it. The displays, steeped in the scientific racism of its day and driven by profits, served as a symbolic universe for the American people of 1893. My photograph depicting a portion of the Anthropology Hall curated by Putnam, Boas, and Dorsey works not only as a capture of the exposition craze that took over the world, but also as a testament to the state of anthropology at the end of the nineteenth century.

Joanna Alario, NYU Museum Studies

Bibliography

Cawelti, John G. “America on Display: The World’s Fairs of 1876, 1893, 1933.” In The
Age of Industrialism in America: Essays in Social Structure and Cultural Values. Frederic Cople Jaher, ed. New York: The Free Press, 1968. Pp. 317-363.

Hinsley, Curtis M. “The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the
World’s Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1893.” In Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Ivan Karp and Steve D. Lavine, eds. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. 344-365.

“The Fair and the Development of Anthropology in the United States.” History of the Fair. 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition Collection. The Field Museum, Chicago. 2008. Retrieved March 19, 2009. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/columbianexpo/history_anthropology.asp

Holmes, W. H. “The World’s Fair Congress of Anthropology.” American Anthropologist,
Vol. 6, No. 4. October 1893. Pp. 423-434.

“The Impact of the World’s Columbian Exposition on Americas.” History of the Fair. 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition Collection. The Field Museum, Chicago. 2008. Retrieved March 19, 2009. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/columbianexpo/history_impact.asp

Jacknis, Ira. “‘A Magic Place’: The Northwest Coast Indian Hall at the American
Museum of Natural History.” In Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions. Mauze, Michael E. Harkin, and Sergei Kan, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Pp. 221-250.

--- “Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of
Anthropology.” In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. G.W. Stocking, ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Pp. 75-111.

Muccigrosso, Robert. Celebrating the New World: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of
1893. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1993.

Notes taken during class tour of AMNH on February 9, 2009.

Rydell, Robert W. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International
Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

“Setting the Stage for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” History of the Fair. 1893
World’s Columbian Exposition Collection. The Field Museum, Chicago. 2008. Retrieved March 19, 2009. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/columbianexpo/history_stage.asp

Shaw, Marian. World’s Fair Notes: A Woman Journalist Views on Chicago’s 1893
Columbian Exposition. St. Paul, Minn.: Pogo Press, 1992.

Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded
Age. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 – Official Catalogue. Chicago: W.B. Conkey
Company, 1893.