Press Release

July 18, 2022Exhibition

One show makes us rethink life and death, and the other focuses on community and discovery.

Left: Rendering of Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery © Field Museum. Right: Portage Lakefront © Field Museum.

Two special exhibitions will open at the Field Museum this fall. Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery focuses on life and death through cultural and biological lenses. Calumet Voices, National Stories, a traveling exhibition whose last stop is at the Field Museum, highlights communities in the Calumet region of Illinois and Indiana and their rich natural and cultural heritage. 

Digital press kits and images for both exhibitions are available here.

Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery

For every living being on this planet, death is the greatest mystery of them all. Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery will highlight different ways humans and animals interact with death. Visitors can see a model depicting how the sunken body of a whale provides food and shelter for organisms around it, an ofrenda or altar created during Dia de Los Muertos as an offering for loved ones who passed away, made by Norma Rios-Sierra, and commentary on how social inequalities in the United States affect quality of life and life expectancy. Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery opens on October 21, 2022. Read more about the exhibition.

Calumet Voices, National Stories

A first-of-its-kind traveling exhibition, co-curated with over 15 local museums, Calumet Voices, National Stories makes its last stop at the Field Museum. The show will include flora, fauna, and fossils from the Museum's Calumet collections, a ten-foot-tall steel plate of historic proportions that was crafted during WWII by women welders, and neighborhood figurines carved by a renowned local artist depicting industrial might, fragile ecosystems, and human stories of Calumet's last 100 years. Visitors will uncover the hidden gems that make this region an American treasure. Calumet Voices, National Stories opens on November 11, 2022. More on the Calumet Voices project can be found on our website.

For more information, contact press@fieldmuseum.org. Further exhibition details will be shared later in the year.