The Field Museum Has ALL the Animals

In March, I had to go to Chicago for a work conference and Erik came with (he is the BEST traveling companion!). While there, we were fortunate to be able to visit the Field Museum at an after-hours party hosted by one of the conference vendors.

I had never been to the Field Museum before, but it’s one of those museums that is spoken of with awe in the museum community. They are known for creating traveling exhibits, and back in 2009, they sent a replica of Sue, the T. Rex, to the Stearns History Museum in St. Cloud, Minnesota, for an exhibit.

It was exciting to roll up to the museum in the dark on the shuttle bus, with the edifice brightly lit and the front stairs partially covered with a tent. I had no idea how big the Field Museum is … it is gigantic! It has to be to house ALL the animals in the collection, including dinosaur, whale, and hippo skeletons, and thousands of taxidermy specimens on display ranging in size from tiny voles to elephants and a massive bear. There are around 40 million specimens and artifacts in the collection in total.

We were among the last people off the bus. There was a woman who needed some help getting off the bus, which had a high step to the ground that was difficult to navigate. Because the woman needed an accessible entrance, we were able to go into the museum through a back door with her. A little behind-the-scenes during our night at the museum!

We were led to the main entrance hall, Stanley Field Hall, which is absolutely massive. The two elephants on display in the hall seemed almost swallowed up by the space, which also contained the model of Maximo, the Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur ever discovered.

 

 

The party was held in a section of the main floor that was near a variety of dioramas of taxidermy animals. These were set up to indicate the native habitat of the animals in the cases.

After winding our way through the dioramas, we found ourselves in a hall that contained cases displaying both taxidermy specimens and skeletons. The experience was rather maze-like, so it felt like we were flowing from one hall to another with so much to take in that it was difficult to keep track of where we were.

 

I was impressed with the walrus skeleton, particularly the skull, which is a solid, formidable mass of bone. I would not want to be on the receiving end of a head-butt from this animal.

 

The hippopotamus skeleton was also fascinating. It’s hard to believe it can hold itself up on its tippy-toes when you look at how big its skull and rib cage are and then factor in the rest of the body.

 

The sheer number of animals on display at the Field made it hard to focus too closely on any of them, let alone read all the labels. I appreciated this exhibit on the Results of Artificial Selection on Domestic Pigeons because it was easy to grasp the overarching theme with the title text and the display of 13 pigeons. There was a second companion exhibit case that I didn’t get a photo of.

 

Having dealt with old taxidermy in a museum exhibit, specifically a beaver with beady, button eyes and fur that had faded to white, I paid some attention to the quality of the taxidermy. In some cases, you can see obvious repairs, like stitched skin. In other instances, you can see the creativity of the taxidermist, who has to figure out how to pose the animal and give it a personality. Whoever created this taxidermy specimen of a Clouded Leopard had a sense of humor because I laughed when I saw how chill it looked.

 

When I said that the Field Museum has ALL the animals, I wasn’t just referring to the volume of specimens. I was also impressed with how many I had never heard of, like this Trogan and Great Potoo.

 

 

The Field has an entire hall of birds, with 19,000 bird specimens donated by museum curator C.B. Cory.

After soaking in the exhibits on the first floor, I was relieved that the second floor, where Sue, the T. Rex, is, wasn’t opened for the evening event. I couldn’t have taken in any more exhibits.

I did wonder, however, how the museum came to be. With such an impressive building and huge collection, surely there had to be a wealthy person involved. And, there was. The museum is named for Marshall Field, of department store fame, who donated $1 million to build the museum. That’s not very much money nowadays, but the museum, which cost $7 million, was built between 1915 and 1920.

The original collection that launched the museum came from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which was held in Chicago. The Field Museum’s website has a nice history on how it came to be and the major founders who were involved.

I’m going to end this post with one final photo. I took this from below the tent covering the stairs, capturing the pediment against the black of the night’s sky just above the tent. I was surprised with how cool this looks.

 

Have you ever been to the Field Museum? If so, what did you think? Do you have a favorite exhibit?