• The Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC) hosted The Nuveen Forum, a series of nine conversations about race and culture, held at The Field Museum from July 1995 through June 1996. Funded by the John Nuveen Company and the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Nuveen Forum brought together Chicago community leaders, including representatives from a variety of ethnic museums and cultural centers, and sparked ideas through its discussion, "A National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity."
  
  
• CCUC was simultaneously involved in developing the Living Together exhibit, a space where some of the outcomes of the Nuveen Forum conversations could be exhibited. Grounded in the anthropological theory of Common Concerns, Different Responses, this exhibit sought to showcase and explain cultural diversity through a variety of cultural examples, including many from Chicago.
  
  
• Other institutions expressed interest in extending the forum and its dialogue on diversity.
  
  
• Cultural Connections was launched as a pilot program in 1998, with eight founding partners: Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, Chicago Japanese American Historical Society, The DuSable Museum of African American History, The Field Museum, Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, The Polish Museum of America, Spertus Museum, and Swedish American Museum Center.
  
  
• The Cultural Connections partnership continues to grow depending upon financial resources and ethnic representation – it now includes 24 cultural museums, centers, and historical societies.
  
  
• The Cultural Connections partnership has resulted in the formation of the broader Chicago Cultural Alliance to increase the partnership's capacity to effect social change and public understanding of cultural diversity.
  
  
• Cultural Connections events have evolved since the beginning: they have shifted to structured conversations by two partners under a year-long theme.
  

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