academic institutions will help keep the Museum in 

 touch with major currents in research. 



* To enable exceptional visiting scholars to study and 

 work at Field Museum. 



# To provide for the publication of major works based on 

 Field Museum collections and research. 



* • * 



Field Museum looks forward to its second century 

 with a drive to continue to expand its contribution to 

 natural history research. Maintaining its excellence in 

 collections and standing in the mainstream of natural 

 history research will help Field Museum make a major 

 research contribution while helping us better serve the 

 people of Chicago and the Midwest. 



A Dynamic Public Museum 



Field Museum is one of the largest public museums in the 

 United States and serves a large and diverse public with 

 a wide range of programs. Approximately half of the 

 Museum's 870,000 square feet is utilized for exhibits, 

 public programming, and assembly space. The Museum's 

 exhibits and public programs deal with the world's cul- 

 tures and physical environments. A full 54 percent of 

 the Museum's current exhibits are focused on anthropol- 

 ogy, and nearly all special exhibits have been arts and 

 humanities-oriented. The Museum also offers a broad 



 Exhibits 



Field Museum Annual Attendance 



millions 

 3.0 



1975 76 77 78 79 '80 '81 '82 '83 '84 1985 



range of festivals, tours, workshops, performances, lec- 

 tures, and courses for preschool through adult audiences. 

 During 1985, 270,619 of our visitors participated in 720 

 special public programs. Since 1927, more than one mil- 

 lion people annually have visited Field Museum — far 

 more in 1933-34, during the Century of Progress Exposi- 

 tion, and in 1977, during the showing of "Treasures of 

 Tutankhamen" (Exhibit 8). 



Field Museum serves a wide variety of constituen- 

 cies in and around Chicago: 



* Family visitors, whether from the Chicago metropoli- 

 tan area or tourists from the Midwest and beyond, are 

 predominantly a well-educated audience coming to the 

 Museum for a relatively undemanding and entertaining 

 educational or cultural experience. Although they ar- 

 rive at the Museum as a loosely organized group, family 

 members have different interests, needs, and attention 

 spans, which the Museum must address. 



* Schoolchildren and teachers still see museums primarily 

 as a place to break out of the classroom for the annual 

 spring field trip. Yet the limited resources of the schools 

 and the demands of the humanities, art, science, and 

 social studies curricula suggest that the rich resources of 

 the Museum can be an increasingly important educa- 

 tional complement and support to classroom work. 



* Underserved inner-city people tend not to feel welcome 

 at museums and do not see them as relating to their daily 

 lives. However, Field Museum's resources could be orga- 

 nized to meet real community, family, and individual 

 needs for education and recreation. 



* Serious students, collectors, and amateur scholars and sci- 

 entists could be the most focused users of the Museum's 

 vast resources. But as presently organized, the Museum is 

 difficult to grasp and penetrate and does not specifically 

 address this vital constituency. 



In serving these groups of people, Field Museum 

 seeks both to entertain and to educate — much as does 

 educational television, now the primary source of nat- 

 ural history information for most of the general public. 



Demographic shifts in greater Chicago, combined 

 with the increasing array of leisure options available, 

 pose distinct challenges to Field Museum in serving the 

 public. For example: 



* Although most visitors view Field Museum positively, 

 they do not see it as particularly distinct from other 

 museums. This lack of a distinctive image is a problem, 

 because Chicago's museum-going population is not 15 



