The Field Museum’s newest exhibition, Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery, invites museumgoers to ask big questions and explore the ways that death affects both the natural world and human culture. It opens Oct. 21.
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, and commentary on how social inequalities in the United States affect quality of life and life expectancy.
Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery poses big questions about death and life and guides visitors through a multisensory, interactive experience to develop new perspectives on some of life’s biggest mysteries. The exhibition shows how the way we experience death and life, and wonder about what’s next are part of what makes us human— yet it’s also a subject we often push aside.
“Death can be hard to talk about, so we’re excited that this exhibition will be a safe and welcoming place for visitors to get curious, ask some questions, and explore all the different answers offered by the natural world as well as human cultures through time.” says Meredith Whitfield, Exhibition Developer at the Field Museum.
“We humans tend to have big questions about death: what happens to my body, my soul, the friends and family I leave behind?” adds Ben Miller, Exhibition Developer. “Visitors will see that these questions don’t necessarily have just one answer, but many.”Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery opens on October 21, 2022.
More information on Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery can be found here.
