Presentation by Joshua Bell, Curator of Globalization, Chair of Anthropology Department, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

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.