Today Indicommons celebrates the Field Museum’s first — and full — year in the Flickr Commons. The Field Museum began in the Commons with a focus on the museum itself, then enlarged that to a focus on the city of Chicago, and then moved farther out to focus on museum research expeditions — creating an exciting collection for historians of anthropology and of museums themselves.

Beginning with the Museum …

The Field Museum’s sets focusing on the museum from 1894 to 1922 — The Field Columbian Museum, The early museum, and Moving the Field Museum in 1920 — are all historically interesting. The first set in particular invites the question, what were museums once like compared with the museums we know today? how much as changed, and how much hasn’t?

American Elk, turtle, alligator

Among the Field Museum’s Chicago-focused sets, the 303-image set on the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition has prompted some of the most exciting user activity. Here on Indicommons, we’ve published Penny’s “Craft Cabin” cards based on the Exposition’s ferris wheel. And, along with other Columbian Exposition photographs from other Commons institutions, we surveyed the Exposition. If you missed it back then, you might want to check it out again, for the links to a reconstructed panorama, a Google Earth map, and a browser plug-in map!

Along the Plaisance

(Not an Expo fan? Maybe you prefer Flower Children!)

Girl in flower costume

The Field Museum’s Commons Expeditions have taken us to Argentina, Panama, Africa, Guyana, Peru, Central America and Mexico in search of more knowledge of rocks, plans, animals, and the people encountered on the way. These underexplored (by Commons standards) collections are truly remarkable. Here’s just a small sampling of what is to be discovered among them:

Honey storage inside tree trunk (British East Africa, 1906)

Woman with fruit specimen (British Guiana, 1922)

Vendor of sweets in San Juan (Puerto Rico, 1899)

Man in field with a wooden device (Peru, 1923)

Rudolf Stahlecker at Pronothrotherium prospect (Argentina, 1926)

Two-toed anteater balanced on a stick (Panama, 1928)

Happy first anniversary in the Commons to the Field Museum and its staff!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 11:55 am and is filed under Anniversaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.