The National Museums of Malawi maintains a series of museums throughout the country. The Field Museum has mainly collaborated with the natural history museum, located in Malawi’s biggest city, Blantyre, but in 2010, Dan Brinkmeier, John Bates and Tom Gnoske used a grant from our Council on Africa to conduct a week-long workshop on museums for attendees from all of the country's museum network. This was done at the Chichiri Public Museum in Blantyre. The workshop focused on strategies to better engage the public with museums including a brain-storming breakout session to plan for a small exhibit on climate change. Following the workshop, two staff from the Chichiri museum, head of the bird collection, Christopher Salema, and bird technician Nyson Gawani came to Chicago for several months of training on specimen and exhibit development. Plans are underway in Malawi to construct a new natural hisotry museum in the capital of Lilongwe. For more on our Malawi collaborations, click here.
