For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) August 30, 2002 NEW CONSERVATION AND COLLECTIONS LAB OPENS AT THE FIELD MUSEUM Chicago, IL – Visitors to The Field Museum will now watch as Museum experts study, clean and prepare artifacts from its extensive anthropology collections. On August 31, the Regenstein Laboratory, a 1,600 square-foot conservation and collections management facility will open in the Museum’s Traveling the Pacific exhibition. Like the popular McDonald’s Fossil Preparation Laboratory, this will be a research area visible to the public. Located on the second floor, the Regenstein Lab will house objects from the Pacific collections, as well as items from all over the world. Visitors will witness the preservation of artifacts such as painted figures from Papua New Guinea, Polynesian jewelry and Native American pottery. With more than 1.2 million objects in the Museum’s anthropology collections, the Regenstein Lab will demonstrate the Museum’s mission to protect its collections for future generations. “Our Museum’s visitors rarely know just how hard we work to care for, study, and keep so many wonders of the world safe and sound,” said John Terrell, Curator of Oceanic Archaeology & Ethnology. “But the new Regenstein facility will show visitors exactly what we do ‘behind-the-scenes’ to look after the Museum’s remarkable anthropology collections.” The lab will include a permanent display of objects from locations in the Pacific Ocean, a set of drawer interactives explaining the processes of collections management and conservation, a display of objects as they are stored in collections, and a view into a working facility where conservators and collections managers work on artifacts.