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The NIU Anthropology Museum is celebrating
its golden anniversary with a communiversity
inspired exhibit curated by DeKalb, "50 Years
of the Anthropology Museum." A grand opening
will be held at four pm on Tuesday, September
23rd, however, the museum is currently open
to spectators during construction.
"We're excited to be opening the fiftieth
anniversary exhibit, which is titled, "Curated
by DeKalb." And what the curator, Laura McDowell
Hopper, and I wanted to achieve is we wanted
the exhibit to talk about the relationships
between the museum and the community, and
what a better way to do that than invite the
community to come and pick their favorite
objects. This exhibit is about the people
in the community and what they have to say
about the museum as much as it is about the
museum and our fiftieth anniversary!"
"A lot of people might see something from
Indonesia or from Papua New Guinea or a place
they've never heard of or been to, and might
not feel a connection to that object because
they think they need to be an expert in that
content area or that kind of object. But what's
cool about this exhibit is you see that people
like the objects we have in our collection
for all kinds of reasons. So some people have
picked things because they're experts, but
other people have picked things because they
think it looks cool or they think this looks
tough and I like that or this thing looks
like my dog. [laughter] So, um, so, you know,
hopefully it will tell people, um, and show
people that objects have multiple stories
to tell and, you know, the content expertise
is not the only layer of a story that an object has."
"We knew that the fiftieth anniversary was
an important event in, uh, for the museum.
And certainly as we think about how we want
to move forward, we aren't very well known
in the community right now, and we wanted
to become well known. We want to be meaningful
for people's lives, and so Laura and I had this idea, and what we're really excited about
is that we hope over the next five, or ten, or
twenty years, it will create new relationships.
"The Anthropology Museum is excited to be
fifty years old, and have been part of NIU
and the communiversity for fifty years. We
look forward to another fifty years at NIU
and in the DeKalb region, and we look forward to becoming a part of everyone's lives." 
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