Legacies

Carl Cotton was the Field Museum’s—and likely Chicago's—first African American taxidermist, the first staff member in our Exhibitions Department, and a multitalented creative who spent almost 25 years creating beautiful exhibitions behind the scenes.

A fixture at the Field Museum for more than 25 years, Bill Stanley was a prolific and passionate researcher, scholar, and educator who developed our mammal collections into one of the best in the world and charted a vital course for natural history collections here at the Field and museums around the globe.

Honoring Lynika Strozier, who was a Black woman, a Chicagoan, a person with a learning disability, an educator, and a former scientist at the Field Museum. But to her colleagues, friends, and family she was also a mentor, a light, and a force for joy. Here’s her story.

Rocky embodied what it means to be a Chicagoan: he was generous in every sense, tremendously proud of our city, admirably civic-minded, and warmly welcoming to all.

He had a long-time association with the museum as an employee in Exhibits and Institutional advancement and particularly because he was a long-time volunteer in the Bird Division.  Paul loved birds and he was devoted to the Bird Division.  People like Paul do not grow on trees, he had extensive knowledge about all aspects of the museum because he loved the place, and anyone who met him would be instantly aware of that. 

For anyone who does not know, Theodore A. Parker was an incredible field ornithologist with an encyclopedic understanding of Neotropical birds, especially their vocalizations.  He was the founding expert for Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), and he died tragically in a plane crash in Ecuador along with botanist Alwyn Gentry and an Ecuadorean pilot on August 3,1993.  The Field Museum’s Parker Gentry Award is given annually to a conservation biologist in their honor.