Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons^™

Exhibiting Human Evolution: How Identity And Ideology Get Factored Into Displays At A Natural History Museum, Chanika Mitchell

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper focuses on how identity and racial ideology are factored into displays in the exhibit, Fossil Fragments: The Riddle of Human Origins, at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. I used visitor questionnaires, observations, exhibition construction and curatorial interviews to examine that the concept of race is so ingrained in our society racial ideology and identity is automatically embedded in exhibits about human evolution. How may the exhibition inform the visitors’ perception of race and human evolution? A key aspect investigated was if the curatorial staff was conscious or unconscious about the racial ideological information present in the …