A museum visit in every class: Art and artifacts bring world culture to campus

A devil mask from Mexico. Pictorial tapestries from India. Beaded headdresses from Cameroon. All are part of a collection of thousands of objects from non-Western cultural traditions that are set out on tables for Loyola University Chicago students’ careful inspection and study.

The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, consisting of nearly 2,850 objects was established in 2014. Chicago-based psychiatrist May Weber, who also had degrees in art and music, assembled the objects throughout her travels and gifted them to Loyola after her passing in 2012. Intended to support research and teaching, the collection is located on the fourth floor of Mundelein Center, in a space with separate areas for storage and viewing. Within this space, students interact with multiple artifacts and archives that typically would be behind protective glass. One day students may be looking at cloths from Indonesia, and another day, African sculptures.

“This is like a museum collection visit every single class,” says Catherine Nichols, who holds a PhD in sociocultural anthropology and teaches the course Museum and Material Culture Research. “They have such an unprecedented level of access and because of that, they’re able to interact with a huge number and variety of objects.”

The majority of the objects are from Asia, Africa, and Mexico, and about one-third are textiles. Also well represented are masks, including festival masks from Mexico. Sculptural objects from west and central Africa make up most of the African materials.

Nichols says that many, but not all, of the students in her course are anthropology majors. They study the items with a variety of methods, including “close looking,” which is what it sounds like—paying very close attention.

During close looking, students make “very detailed observations about objects and considering them qualitatively, quantitatively, looking at design, form, color, material, line, shape,” Nichols explains.

Students also illustrate what they see. “If you draw something, then that really makes you have to study the object itself in a very focused way,” she says.

They also use operational sequencing, a method used primarily by archaeologists, to reconstruct the chain of events that led to the production, use, and deposition of an object, Nichols says.

“It allows students to consider what environments, tools, materials, techniques and social needs are involved in making and using objects,” she says. A student researching a textile, for example, might learn about the process and tools of weaving.

“We really try and train the students to holistically evaluate material as products and processes of culture,” she says.

Each student chooses one object from the collection to study. At the end of the course, they take what they have learned and transform it into a short interpretation, similar to what would appear on a museum exhibit label. This requires students to consider what is most important or engaging about an object.

The students’ research helps Nichols herself better understand the artifacts, as she’s always learning additional context about the objects.

“Their research is absolutely essential to my knowledge of the collection and then, based on that, my ability to curate the collection,” she says.

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