Exploring The Field Museum, Chicago

The Field Museum is one of Chicago’s major attractions! It opened in 1894, and is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. I’ve been wanting to visit the Field Museum for basically 10 years now, mostly because of Emily Graslie’s fun Youtube channel, The Brain Scoop. Also I really love museums and want to visit as many as I can, really.

This post is an overview of my experience visiting the museum, some of the exhibits I saw, and whether I recommend visiting it or not.

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Chicago Travel Resources

First, pick up a Chicago Go City Pass to get discounts on entrance fees and activities!

Second, I recommend staying at HI Chicago, The J. Ira & Nicki Harris Family Hostel which is near the train station, several metro lines and within walking distance to a lot of the major sightseeing stuff. They have dorms and pretty nice private rooms, plus HUGE common areas.

Third, if you need an eSIM then I always recommend getting one from Airalo.

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Field Museum Info

Address: 1400 S Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60605
Plus code: V98M+G6 Chicago, Illinois
Phone #: +13129229410
Opening Hours: Monday-Sunday 9:00am-5:00pm, last entry 4:00pm
Website: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/

Field Museum Entry Cost

I had to make a separate section for this because it’s crazy confusing. Basically, there’s different prices for if you’re an Illinois resident, if you’re a Chicago resident, if you’re an out-of-state visitor, if you want to go to a specific exhibit or not, if you have a membership, etc. etc.

To simplify it for an out-of-state adult tourist (which is what I am), then you have these options:

Get a Chicago CityPASS® and get the Field Museum All-Access Pass, plus 4 other Chicago attractions, for one low price.
Buy a ticket online.
- Basic Admission (general admission only): $30 USD
- Discovery Pass (basic admission + 1 ticketed exhibition): $37 USD
- All-Access Pass (basic admission + all ticketed exhibitions): $43 USD

My Experience at the Field Museum

The Field Museum is HUGE, so I didn’t try to see everything. I focused on a few exhibitions I really wanted to see, and made sure to take plenty of breaks. The Museum has a lot of benches, some nice common areas for guests to sit and eat or hang out, wonderful restrooms and a few dining options for different budgets. It was a great way to spend the day!

The following is (some of) the exhibits I saw, some photos, and my impressions.

Exterior

Actually let’s start with the outside of the museum. First, the building is absolutely massive.

Second, there’s some cool statues and other pieces outside along the walkway.

Third, the museum is very close to the Lake Walk and Lake Michigan, which is a beautiful outdoor area with lots of cool public gardens and other stuff to do. Definitely need to stop by if you come to the museum!

Interior/Entry Way

The main hall is (like everything else in the Field Museum) absolutely massive. When I visited, they had a few dino skeletons, a pterodactyl model and some cool statues tucked away up on the 2nd floor.

Africa (Exhibition)

This is really a neat exhibition. It’s all about the different cultures and history of Africa as a whole, and it has some great reproductions of streets and businesses. Also, they did this cool thing where they reproduced sounds of the city, so like you’d hear people talking, cars honking, etc. On the other hand, it was just a BIT spooky to be walking through these fake cities and there’s nobody actually there.

Cyrus Tang Hall of China (exterior)

When I visited, this exhibition hall was a ticketed one so I didn’t actually go into it. However, they had some pieces pulled out to display in the main hallway, which you could see without having to go into the ticketed part. One section was to highlight Tibetan art, and the other was a Chinese Garden.

Tibetan gallery: Painted wooden dome from a lama temple

The Cyrus Tang Hall of China is now part of the General Admission ticket price, so I’ll have to make sure to visit it the next time I stop by!

South Pacific

This was one of my favorite exhibitions! Really cool masks, drums, pieces of art, weapons decor, and so on– all behind glass so taking photos was a bit of a pain, but I did get these very tall drums:

Maori Meeting House

This is in a separate room to the South Pacific exhibit but obviously related to it. It’s a real meeting house, built in 1881 on Tokomaru Bay, and you can go inside it! A traditional meeting house is used for community events and celebrations, and this one is used for that purpose now as well. The Field Museum does different events and exhibits inside it, though there were none happening when I visited.

Plants of the World

An exhibit hall about, well, different plants from around the world! These are all recreations of real plants, so it was a teeny bit boring compared to, say, visiting an exotic garden or something, but if you’re a plant nerd then you’d probably like it.

Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet

This is where the dinosaur skeletons live, and it is VERY popular with families and children. Some good info areas about how things evolve, the history of dinosaurs, and how it ties into our own history.

SUE the T. Rex

SUE the T. Rex is basically the Field Museum’s mascot, and she shows up in a lot of marketing materials and souvenirs in the gift shop. SUE is special because she’s the largest and most complete T. rex fossil available, with over 90% of her skeleton recovered! She was found in South Dakota in 1990 by Sue Hendrickson (which is where she gets her name). The Field Museum got SUE in 1997, and she now lives in the Evolving Planet exhibit space.

Abbott Hall of Conservation: Restoring Earth

Excellent exhibition about conservation projects, why they’re important, and some examples of ongoing projects. Some interesting interactive elements, and plenty of videos so it’s not just reading text on a wall.

Inside Ancient Egypt

By this point I was rushing a bit, and all the “good stuff” was behind very reflective glass, so I didn’t get any decent photos. But rest assured: it’s a pretty good Ancient Egypt exhibit. They have a room from a tomb (or something similar) that you can go inside, and it was cool to get down there and be surrounded by stone.

Pressed Coin Souvenirs

If you collected pressed pennies, like I do, then the museum has several machines for you to acquire new pieces from:

Mold-A-Rama

These are machines that make plastic molds of a figure! They’re pretty rare in the US now, but the Field Museum has SIX of them. Here’s a photo so you can see what they look like:

Final Thoughts on the Field Museum

One of the things that kept shocking me was I expected a lot of it to be reproductions or something, but no. They were REAL ancient artifacts (and dino skeletons). And while some of the exhibits seemed a bit old-fashioned, that’s because the models are literally from 100 years ago.

It’s an AMAZING museum, well worth visiting and worth the entry price. If I lived here I’d get a membership so I could keep coming in to see things. Not only are the exhibits very interesting, but you can tell that the staff are constantly working to keep things updated, that they want the museum to be modern and well-cared for, that they want their visitors to have a good time and be supported, and that they love the museum and want it to succeed.

Highly recommend visiting!