In May 1890, the World's Columbian Exposition (WCE) Directorate hired Frederick Ward Putnam, Head of Harvard University's Peabody Museum, to oversee the development of anthropology exhibitions at the WCE. Anthropology is the study of humankind from a biological and cultural perspective. On May 31, 1890, Putnam made his first public appeal for both ethnographic (studying present-day cultures through fieldwork) and archaeological (studying past cultures based on material remains recovered from surveys and excavations) collections for display at the WCE.⁴ He said that he wanted to make "an important contribution to science" with "a perfect exhibition of the past and present peoples of America."

In 1891, with a total budget of only $100,000, Putnam enlisted the help of skilled assistants. He hired Franz Boas, who today is considered one of the founders of U.S. anthropology, to oversee the physical anthropology collections, while George Amos Dorsey (Putnam's graduate student) oversaw ethnographic and archaeological collections. Boas and Dorsey then helped recruit another 100 mostly amateur anthropologists and archeologists, government officials, missionaries, and army and navy officers to collect objects produced by peoples from diverse cultures, spanning from Alaska to Greenland to Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America. All told, nearly 50,000 objects from diverse areas went on display at the WCE, mostly as part of a 160,000 square-foot exhibit in the Anthropology Building of the WCE's White City entitled Anthropology: Man and His Work.

In the words of Frederick Ward Putnam, Director of Ethnology:

"When the Department of Ethnology [for the World's Columbian Exposition] was organized in February, 1891, it was with the understanding that a considerable amount of money should be appropriated for original scientific work and that the results thus obtained should be retained in Chicago as the nucleus of a scientific institution which should be established in the city and should be named the Columbus Memorial Museum. It is hoped that at the close of the Exposition the friends of science will unite in carrying out this plan to endow the city of Chicago with a museum of the natural sciences....From this outline sketch of Department M, known as that of Ethnology, in the World's Columbian Exposition, it is evident that the amount of scientific material brought together from all parts of the world affords a broad field for the study of man and his surroundings, from the earliest times to the present day; and it will undoubtedly awaken a new interest in the problems relating to the origin of man and to his distribution over the earth; while the science of anthropology in all its branches can but receive an impetus form this comprehensive exhibit."⁶


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