Collections are the essence and the life blood of any museum, whatever the collections may be: paintings, porcelains, racing cars, steam locomotives, barbed wire, or—in the case of The Field Museum in Chicago—the approximately 23 million natural history specimens and cultural objects cared for (we prefer the word curated) by the Museum's four scientific departments:  Anthropology, Botany, Geology, and Zoology. 

Effective stewardship of collections calls from their physical care and conservation, not just their study and interpretation.

However, it is our conviction that museum research, collections care, and conservation work are not just about looking after the things in our safekeeping in a responsible and appropriate manner.  

Museum collections can also be a way to build relationships and real partnerships between museums as public places and people outside such institutions who care as much about these "things" as we do.

• Why and how we make collections
• Recent new acquisitions
• Mystery objects
  
• Recent visits to the collections
• Our major Pacific and island Southeast Asian Collections
• Albert Buell Lewis Collection
• Captain A. W. F. Fuller Collection
• Fay Cooper Cole Collection
• The 1958 Fuller Sonaband Recordings
• Easter Island Collection