Alaka Wali, Curator for North American Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History
“Unexpected Connections: Empowering Communities Through Museums”

Abstract: Museums of the 21st Century are transforming their practice to engage constituencies in new and deeper ways. The de-centering of curatorial authority toward more participatory modes of knowledge production and representation are yielding richly creative strategies that expand the potential of museums to go beyond display and work collaboratively with diverse communities to undertake social change. In the case of the Field Museum, a participatory action research approach is used to “activate heritage” in the Chicago region and in the Amazon region of Northern Peru. As widely different as these two settings are, a similar, museum-based approach has worked to empower communities. More recently, activating the heritage encoded in the North American anthropology collections through engaging contemporary artists has also led to new forms of collaboration.

Alaka Wali’s profile on the Field Museum’s website: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/staff/profile/416