The Museum Studies Program presents a lecture by visiting scholar Joshua Bell, curator of globalization and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, on Thursday, March 14, at 5:30 p.m. in the Space 2435 U-M North Quad (105 S. State Street).
Bell's lecture, “Unseen Connections: A Natural History of the Cellphone,” will examine the role of anthropology in a natural history museum in the 21st century and discuss a new exhibit, Cellphone: Unseen Connections, that he curated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). The exhibit examines cellular technology and its cultural, ecological, and social intersections around the world, and is informed by a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative research on cellular telephony in Washington, DC. The exhibit consists of 750 objects, a comic book mural, interactive displays, and 33 personal profiles of people along the cellphone’s global supply chain from 35 countries. Drawing inspiration from the relational perspectives of Indigenous world-making in Oceania, as well as the moral and ethical obligations of political ecology, this exhibit demonstrates how natural history is about, and for, everyone.
This event is free and open to the public.
