What is the role of anthropology in a natural history museum in the 21st century? Thinking through the issues bundled up in this question, within this talk I will discuss a new exhibit "Cellphone: Unseen Connections" that I curated at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Cellphone examines cellular technology and its cultural, ecological and social intersections around the world, and is informed by a decade of interdisciplinary and collaborative research on cellular telephony in Washington D.C.. The exhibit consists of 750 objects, a comic book mural, interactive displays and 33 personal profiles of people along the cellphone’s global supply chain from 35 countries. Drawing inspiration from the relational perspectives of Indigenous world-making in Oceania, as well as the moral and ethical obligations of political ecology, this exhibit demonstrates how natural history is about, and for, everyone.

https://ummsp.rackham.umich.edu/tribe-event/unseen-connections-a-natural-history-of-the-cellphone/