CENTENNIAL DIRECTIONS 



growing, and Field Museum must therefore compete 

 with the city's other museums for a limited number of 

 visitors. 



* Many visitors see the Museum fairly narrowly, as the 

 home of dinosaurs, mummies, cavemen, and North 

 American Indians — suggesting that the Museum has 

 not communicated the breadth of its collections and 

 expertness. 



* The suburban population of the collar counties is 

 growing, but their visits to Field Museum may be declin- 

 ing as suburbanites increasingly spend their leisure time 

 in their own communities. As the suburbs become more 

 established, they develop institutions of their own. Sub- 

 urbanites are discouraged from visiting the central city 

 because of travel time, congestion, cost, and perceived 

 lack of security. 



* With the continued growth of the Hispanic commu- 

 nity, the majority of Chicago's population is Black and 

 Hispanic — two groups that have historically been under- 

 served by the Museum and underrepresented among its 

 visitors. 



* The imposing scale and classical formality of the 

 building, the established position of the institution in 

 the community, and the solemn tone of the Museum 

 create the impression of a somewhat aloof and 

 unapproachable place — in direct contrast to the 

 Museum's recent emphasis on informal and accessible 

 programming. 



Meeting these challenges is essential to tapping the 

 vitality of Field Museum and making it both an excellent 

 public museum of natural history and a wonderful place 

 to visit. 



Field Museum aspires to be the institution that de- 

 fines "natural history" for the people of greater Chicago. 

 To move toward this goal, the Museum will: 



* Renew its major thematic exhibits; to build in-depth 

 educational resources, and to offer informal exhibits and 

 programs, providing direct, hands-on experiences with 

 natural history materials and themes. 



* Develop programs that address real community and 

 individual needs, appealing to people of various levels of 

 knowledge, from casual beginners to dedicated hob- 

 byists, collectors, and amateur scholars and scientists. 



* Organize the Museum's vast information and human 

 resources to make them more understandable, access- 

 ible, and useable. 



* Build an audience and staff that more closely reflect 



the economic and ethnic diversity of Chicago, reaching 

 out to underserved communities. 



* Lighten the public face of the Museum, making it 

 more human and approachable. 



Key to achieving these goals will be a flexible and 

 dynamic approach to exhibits and public programs. Dur- 

 ing the next few years, the Museum will concentrate on 

 implementing this approach rather than mounting ma- 

 jor special exhibits. This approach will be supported and 

 reinforced by a variety of other initiatives — school pro- 

 grams, community outreach effortSj and a more focused 

 marketing approach. In the remainder of this section we 

 outline the Museum's new approach to exhibits and then 

 describe the supporting initiatives. 



A New Approach to 

 Exhibits and Public Programs 



To be an effective complement to educational television 

 in entertaining and educating the public on natural his- 

 tory, Field Museum needs to be an exciting place that 

 offers a range of challenging experiences. While televi- 

 sion can effectively overcome the limits imposed by 

 geography and time, a museum offers a chance to see and 

 interact with real materials — a direct experience rather 

 than an observation via the camera. It is also one of the 

 few user-paced, free-access learning and cultural experi- 

 ences available in the modem world. A museum is truly 

 a place of individual learning. 



To reach the public with such experiences, exhibits 

 and programs need to be: 



* Adaptable to the changing needs of the public 



* Interesting and useful to people with different back- 

 grounds and levels of interest in the subject matter 



* Useful as resource centers for the serious student, hob- 

 byist, and collector, who seeks a more comprehensive 

 treatment of the subject or theme 



* Able to give an overview of subjects and themes to 

 millions of people. 



To meet these diverse and often conflicting require- 

 ments, Field Museum plans to organize its public space 

 into three different but interrelated formats: 



* Informal, interactive exhibits and programs, which will 

 be directly accessible to virtually any visitor 



* Major thematic exhibits, which will provide broad over- 

 views of their subjects and highlight the Museum's 

 collections 



