By Rosa Cabrera
This article was published in Museum News July/August 2006.
In front of a restaurant in one of Chicago’s most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, a yellow school bus drops off more than 30 Latino parents, some with small children in strollers. As they settle around the dining tables, their eyes wander toward the displays of Filipino posters and objects that have been assembled especially for their visit. The president and the curator of the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago welcome the group, offer them empanadas and coffee and talk about how cultural traditions are transmitted from generation to generation. A week earlier, this same group had been invited to the Polish Museum of America for a similar presentation.
During both events, the parents were intrigued by the similarities and differences between Filipino and Polish experiences and their own. One parent told the group, “Yo no sabia que los Filipinos hablan tan bien Inglés porque este país ha tenido gran influencia en su país.” (“I didn’t know that the reason Filipinos speak English well is because this country [the United States] has had a significant influence on their country.”)
For the past five years, the two museums have offered cross-cultural presentations to a diverse group of parents through a program called Cultural Connections, a collaboration between the Field Museum and 22 local partners (see sidebar). Launched in 1998, the program is dedicated to fostering cultural understanding and the value of cultural differences in Chicago, one of the world’s most ethnically, racially and religiously diverse cities. Cultural Connections activities are presented jointly, take place at the partners’ locations and are open to the general public, particularly Chicago Public Schools teachers and parents. Partners range from mainstream cultural institutions to ethnic-specific museums and cultural centers. While many of the partners have dedicated full-time staff and sites, some rely on volunteers and borrow community venues for their programs.
Like many mainstream museums, some of the most critical challenges facing the Field include collections rooted in the colonial era that have limited contemporary relevance to many cultural groups; a sometimes contentious relationship with the groups represented by its exhibitions and collections; and the need to sustain meaningful relationships with local communities and diversify staff and governance structures. A decade ago the museum established the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC) as a bridge between the public and its collections and scientific research, as well as to help the Field serve its Chicago and neighboring communities and enrich its own knowledge of contemporary urban life. One of CCUC’s first projects was to convene a group of anthropologists and members of community organizations to discuss efforts to address race, ethnic identity and multiculturalism at a forum titled “Conversations on Pluralism and Identity in America.” These conversations proved that the public does indeed seek safe environments to explore race, ethnicity and diversity. This “got the center in touch with Chicago through community leaders who helped create an initial network for further dialogue,” says CCUC Director Alaka Wali, “including the development of ‘Living Together,’ a Field Museum exhibition about the value of cultural diversity.”
CCUC began a series of dialogues with Chicago-area ethnic museums and cultural centers that had participated in the “Living Together” advisory committee. These discussions led to the development of the Cultural Connections program, which seeks to show the public that museums and cultural centers are unique educational resources for learning about the diversity of one’s own city. Cultural Connections uses an anthropological relativistic approach; that is, it looks across cultures to explain the various ways humans deal with the common concerns of life within the context of shifting environmental and historical circumstances. The Field Museum raises the funds for the program, which has a $230,000 budget and a staff of three. A collaboration with the Chicago Association for the Practice of Anthropology provides additional resources and expertise.
While cultural diversity has been at the root of some intense conflicts and misunderstandings, it also is acknowledged as one of Chicago’s strengths and a source for its powerful creativity. Cultural organizations of all sizes can help address this paradox when they collaborate with each other and serve as sites where diverse audiences can talk about contemporary common issues. To that end, Cultural Connections stimulates open conversation by providing substantive information about the cultural practices reflected in first-person perspectives and in museum collections and exhibitions.
At a recent presentation, for example, the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture compared the work of muralists in their two communities. One presenter talked about the struggles surrounding fair housing, bilingual education, Puerto Rican independence, racism and gentrification as depicted in the mural art form. The other explained how murals inspire and educate black audiences about their ongoing contributions to the development of the American landscape. Such comparative presentations are developed through a guiding framework—“Common Concerns, Different Responses”—which is based on the premise that people respond to problems differently depending on their specific circumstances and constraints. The framework enables partners and participants to see the myriad ways in which environment, history and human ingenuity have shaped cultural diversity.
Cultural Connections is defined by a series of educational events in the fall and spring, each one presented jointly by two of the partners and reflecting a theme selected by all of them. For example, under the theme “Traditions of Transition: Understanding Rites of Passage,” the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum and Cambodian Association of Illinois highlighted celebrations honoring ancestors, and the Spertus Museum and the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture explored coming of age through the Bar/Bat Mitzvah and Quinceañero rituals. Each year the program welcomes nearly 2,000 participants—including local university students—and reaches another 1 million Chicagoans through Chicago Access Network Television (CAN-TV), a noncommercial cable station that broadcasts Cultural Connections events at least twice a year.
Two recent initiatives are designed to increase the participation of specific, targeted audiences—teachers and parents of school-aged children—who are in a position to broadly disseminate the Cultural Connections message. Both the Professional Development Course for Teachers and the Parent Field Trip Series receive financial and administrative support from the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Language and Cultural Education.
The Professional Development Course for Teachers was established to close the cultural gap between Chicago’s teachers and its students. More than 90 percent of the student population in the city’s public school system is African-American, Latino, or Asian. By contrast, only about 54 percent of the teachers have these backgrounds. In addition, the school system reports that students speak more than 100 languages and represent at least as many different cultural groups. The course emphasizes the critical self-analysis and reflection that are crucial for understanding diverse world views, perspectives and issues of identity. In the past five years, more than 200 public school teachers have enrolled in the course. Evaluations indicate that those teachers now think more critically about cultural differences and similarities and have a better understanding about how to deal with issues of race, ethnicity and identity in the classroom. In addition, nearly 40 percent have arranged to visit the partners’ sites with their students.
“After completing this course, I believe I have learned to be a better observer,” noted a school counselor. “I have learned to be more careful about jumping to conclusions, [making] judgments or stereotyping others. I have been made more aware of my own biases and of the need to challenge those [biases]. I [take more care] to be patient, to listen, to ask questions and attempt to understand other perspectives, views, cultures and backgrounds. I feel that I can be bolder in asking questions about a person’s culture and ethnicity as a means to understanding the whole person.”
The Parent Field Trip Series brings groups of parents to two Cultural Connections sites for events like the program for Latino parents hosted by the Filipino American Historical Society and the Polish Museum of America. The field trips, followed by a workshop at their children’s school, help the parents dispel community stereotypes and the idea of “strange” cultural practices. Parents also are encouraged to use museums as cultural and educational resources on an ongoing basis. As of April 2006, more than 800 parents had participated, including groups from the city’s Latino, Pakistani, Arab, Bosnian, Africacn-American and Polish communities (translations are provided when necessary). Evaluations indicate that though most had never visited the partner institutions before the field trips, more than 60 percent now share their learning experience with family members and friends and 87 percent now feel more comfortable about planning future visits.
“The event presentations continue to be a great learning experience for the young members of our community,” says Joe Podlasek, director of the American Indian Center. “I have seen a growth in their public presentation skills and in being comfortable to share with others outside our community.”
Such positive responses from teachers and parents also countered the pessimistic viewpoints that challenged the program’s development at the start. Field Museum President John McCarter, for example, initially believed that “such an endeavor [would] never work” due to the political complexities of uniting Chicago’s cultural organizations. George Hrycelak of the Ukrainian National Museum, one of the founder partners, thought Cultural Connections would be “a short-term project because of dissimilar kinds of players with different needs and interests.” And partners whose history traditionally has been excluded from the Field questioned the museum’s motives. Today, however, all the partners see Cultural Connections as an opportunity to increase their visibility outside their communities.
Even so, several partners recently have been frustrated by the growing gap between their organizations and cultural institutions with greater access to financial opportunities, such as the Museums in the Park, 10 institutions located on Chicago Park District land. This group of museums, which includes three Cultural Connections partners—Field Museum, Chicago History Museum, and DuSable Museum of African American History—collaborate on educational projects and on efforts to lobby for state funding and obtain greater visibility. As one Cultural Connections partner commented, museums “outside the big nine are left to sink or swim” in the turbulent and culturally political current of the Windy City.
Nevertheless, the Field has worked with community-based partners to ensure representative inclusion in its exhibitions and programs. And after seven years of successful collaborations, there is a general consensus that the “big museum” is finally stepping up to the plate and connecting to its communities, due in large part to CCUC’s recognition of their strengths and assets. The partners meet twice a year to review program status, select a theme, and discuss relevant issues. Communication, patience, flexibility, transparency and an organic approach to program development are keys to sustaining healthy and fruitful relationships.
Today, the major challenge facing the program is its future sustainability during these uncertain financial times, which affect cultural institutions of all sizes. The partners talk regularly about how they can expand public awareness of their organizations as cultural educational resources, promote diversity as a social and community asset and help connect history and culture to contemporary social issues. In 2004, they began to create an alliance of ethnic community-based museums and cultural centers in partnership with external institutional stakeholders. The Cultural Alliance will allow partners to advance their common efforts beyond Cultural Connections, increase the ways members can collaborate with one another and promote public understanding of the value of cultural diversity in their communities. Projects will range from promoting tourism in neighborhoods to building operational capacity to advocating on public policy issues of mutual interest. The Field Museum will continue to promote public understanding of cultural diversity through the educational initiatives of the Cultural Connections program.
Cultural Connections partners seek to convey the message that all their organizations are for the public at large. In other words, you don’t have to be Swedish or Filipino to find those community-based museums educational, relevant and of value. Cultural Connections also has built a trusting relationship between the Field Museum and its community-based museum partners. There have been challenging moments that reflect frustration with “the big museum,” but many more examples of appreciation and willingness to work together.
The model museum for the 21st century will be one that emphasizes its relevance to the life experiences of its diverse communities. For mainstream museums, this means making a commitment to understand contemporary urban culture and explore creative ways to bring this knowledge to the public. Only by actively acknowledging our human diversity will museums become, as the late museum theorist Stephen E. Weil once noted, “instruments for social change.”
The Cultural Connections program received generous support from the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, The Joyce Foundation, Kraft Foods, The Women’s Board at The Field Museum, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Bank One, Robert Morris College, Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Language and Cultural Education and Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.
Rosa Cabrera is public involvement manager, Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, The Field Museum, Chicago, and a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information on Cultural Connections and the development of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, visit www.fieldmuseum.org/ccuc.
Cultural Connections Partners
(for the 2004-2005 season)
• American Indian Center
• Arab American Action Network
• Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture*
• Brazilian Cultural Center of Chicago
• Cambodian Association of Illinois
• Chicago Historical Society*
• Chicago Japanese American Historical Society*
• DuSable Museum of African American History*
• The Field Museum*
• Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago
• Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center
• The HistoryMakers
• Indo-American Center
• Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture
• Korean American Resource and Cultural Center
• Mitchell Museum of the American Indian
• The Polish Museum of America*
• Southeast Historical Society
• Spertus Museum
• Swahili Institute of Chicago
• Swedish American Museum Center*
• Ukrainian National Museum*
* Founding members are marked with an asterisk.
