MEANINGFUL DONATIONS AND SHARED GOVERNANCE: Growing the Philippine Heritage Collection through Co-Curation at the Field Museum

Abstract

In this article, we ask the question, “How does an anthropology collection grow with an interested public in the early twenty-first century?” We discuss the relationship between the Field Museum and the Chicago-based Filipina/o community. The Field Museum facilitates interaction between community and institution, urging interested Filipina/o individuals from outside the museum to embrace stewardship of collections, thus becoming “co-curators.” With the active involvement of co-curators and museum professionals, an object collection becomes a site of heritage, benefiting from the combination of community knowledge and academic scholarship. We chronicle this museum/community relationship by interpreting a recent collaborative process: Filipina/o co-curators were asked to submit recommendations regarding new additions to the Field Museum's Philippine Heritage Collection in the summer of 2016. Discussions around this process illuminate the complex relationship between the Filipina/o community and the Field Museum. We conclude with recommendations for other institutions that wish to pursue a similar museum/community collaboration.