Collection

Philippine Heritage Collection

The Field Museum is home to over 10,000 objects from the Philippines, the largest collection of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. This collection includes textiles, personal adornments, weapons, ritual equipment, basketry, woodcarvings, musical instruments, smoking pipes, and export ceramics. Approximately 75% of the Philippine collection was gathered during anthropological field expeditions between 1907 and 1910 to northern Luzon, central Mindanao, Mindoro, Palawan, and Sulu. After these initial expeditions, the Philippine collection grew with donations from the personal reserves of U.S. soldiers who served in the Philippine-American War during the early 1900s. Since this time the Philippine collection has grown primarily through private donations of mostly mid-twentieth century material. More recently, the Museum is collaborating with communities in the the U.S. and the Philippines to collect contemporary items that tell the diverse stories of Philippine heritage.