Editing Franz Boas (section)

==World's Columbian Exposition==
{{main|World's Columbian Exposition}}
Anthropologist [[Frederic Ward Putnam]], director and curator of the [[Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology|Peabody Museum]] at [[Harvard University]], who had been appointed as head of the Department of Ethnology and Archeology for the Chicago Fair in 1892, chose Boas as his first assistant at Chicago to prepare for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition or Chicago World's Fair, the 400th anniversary of [[Christopher Columbus]]'s arrival in the Americas.<ref name="Truman1893">{{Cite book|last =Truman|first =Benjamin|title =History of the World's Fair: Being a Complete and Authentic Description of the Columbian Exposition From Its Inception|publisher =J. W. Keller & Co.|year =1893|location =Philadelphia, PA}}</ref><ref name="WDL">{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/11369/ |title = Bird's-Eye View of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 |website = [[World Digital Library]] |date = 1893 |access-date = 2013-07-17 }}</ref> Boas had a chance to apply his approach to exhibits. Boas directed a team of about one hundred assistants, mandated to create anthropology and ethnology exhibits on the Indians of North America and South America that were living at the time Christopher Columbus arrived in America while searching for India. Putnam intended the World's Columbian Exposition to be a celebration of Columbus' voyage. Putnam argued that showing late nineteenth century Inuit and First Nations (then called Eskimo and Indians) "in their natural conditions of life" would provide a contrast and celebrate the four centuries of Western accomplishments since 1493.<ref name="Lorini_2003">{{citation |url=http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/8_2003/lorini.html |year=2003 |title=Alice Fletcher and the Search for Women's Public Recognition in Professionalizing American Anthropology |first=Alessandra |last=Lorini |work=Cromohs |volume=8 |pages=1–25 |location=Florence, Italy |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160127183350/http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/8_2003/lorini.html |archive-date=2016-01-27 }}</ref>

Franz Boas traveled north to gather ethnographic material for the Exposition. Boas had intended public science in creating exhibitions for the Exposition where visitors to the Midway could learn about other cultures. Boas arranged for fourteen Kwakwaka'wakw aboriginals from British Columbia to come and reside in a mock [[Kwakwaka'wakw]] village, where they could perform their daily tasks in context. Inuit were there with 12-foot-long whips made of sealskin, wearing sealskin clothing and showing how adept they were in sealskin kayaks. His experience with the Exposition provided the first of a series of shocks to Franz Boas's faith in public anthropology. The visitors were not there to be educated. By 1916, Boas had come to recognize with a certain resignation that "the number of people in our country who are willing and able to enter into the modes of thought of other nations is altogether too small ... The American who is cognizant only of his own standpoint sets himself up as arbiter of the world."<ref name="Boas_1945">{{citation |title=Race and Democratic Society |first=Franz |last=Boas |edition=1 |year=1945 |location=New York |work=J. J. Augustin}}A collection of 33 public addresses by the late Boas</ref><ref name="Boas_1969">{{citation |title=Race and Democratic Society |first=Franz |last=Boas |year=1969 }} A collection of 33 public addresses by the late Boas</ref>{{rp|170}}

Boas collaborated with [[Benjamin Ives Gilman]] to record music performed by [[Kwakwakaʼwakw]] musicians who were appearing at the Columbian Exposition. He had previously collaborated with [[Alice Cunningham Fletcher]] at the [[Bureau of American Ethnology]] in making several recordings of [[Indigenous music of North America]]. Boas and Fletcher partnered with music educator [[John Comfort Fillmore]] (1843–1898) in transcribing the music they recorded into [[music notation]], and Fillmore also worked on the music Boas and Gilman recorded during the Columbian Exposition.<ref name="Grove"/>

After the exposition, the ethnographic material collected formed the basis of the newly created [[Field Museum]] in Chicago with Boas as the curator of anthropology.<ref name="Boas_Reader_1982">{{citation|first=George W. Jr.|last=Stocking |title=A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911 |location=Chicago |work=University of Chicago Press |year=1982 |page=354 }}</ref> He worked there until 1894, when he was replaced (against his will) by BAE archeologist [[William Henry Holmes]].

In 1896, Boas was appointed Assistant Curator of Ethnology and [[Somatology]] of the [[American Museum of Natural History]] under Putnam. In 1897, he organized the [[Jesup North Pacific Expedition]], a five-year-long field-study of the nations of the Pacific Northwest, whose ancestors had migrated across the Bering Strait from Siberia. This was the first comprehensive anthropological survey of the north circumpolar region, and Boas and his students made many sound and film recordings during this trip. These included a wide range of cultural recordings, including music with written song texts and translations. The music recordings produced during this study became a model for later studies in ethnomusicology.<ref name="Grove"/>

Boas attempted to organize the research gathered from the Jessup Expedition into contextual, rather than evolutionary, lines. He also developed a research program in line with his curatorial goals: describing his instructions to his students in terms of widening contexts of interpretation within a society, he explained that "... they get the specimens; they get explanations of the specimens; they get connected texts that partly refer to the specimens and partly to abstract things concerning the people; and they get grammatical information". These widening contexts of interpretation were abstracted into one context, the context in which the specimens, or assemblages of specimens, would be displayed: "... we want a collection arranged according to tribes, in order to teach the particular style of each group". His approach, however, brought him into conflict with the President of the Museum, [[Morris Jesup]], and its director, [[Hermon Bumpus]]. By 1900 Boas had begun to retreat from American museum anthropology as a tool of education or reform (Hinsley 1992: 361). He resigned in 1905, never to work for a museum again.