natural history museum

natural history museum

Exploring the Evolution of Life: A Comprehensive Study of Natural History Museums

1. Introduction to Natural History Museums

But how can a single concept of the American natural history museum encompass its diversity, its colorful stories, and questions raised within a generally shared tradition? The fifty objects theme approach gives us a handy web of threads that cover several fundamental characteristics of fabulously attractive visual and material goods dispersed into four museum storehouses described concretely within a short space. Such an exercise becomes useful indeed as it engages the imagination with rich and varied tales that suggest a much more complex and practical reality. In this context, the particular is explored in order to understand the museum enterprise and more specifically how people operate within the particular American natural history variation. Without this picture, questions of purpose can be easily misconstrued or trivialized. This illustrated journey may help place the American natural history museum within broader schemes.

“What, exactly, are natural history museums?” This question has many answers, but all too often, the responses settle for mantra-like descriptions that fail to capture the museum’s rich possibilities. Natural history museums feature exhibitions of animals, plants, minerals, fossils, and/or meteorites, plus laboratories, support centers, collections, research programs, programs for the public, websites, and staff with diverse areas of expertise who carry out their work in very particular ways. All of these assets exist within a relatively cohesive cultural envelope. Professional society members sometimes exhibit surprise and even consternation that others see the enterprise somewhat differently in various degrees. With so many goods being dispensed by natural history museums, is the surprise justified? Apparently, such interpretation reveals an extraordinary blind spot in many of the museum’s traditional professional keepers. If so many competing views are entertained, then shouldn’t the “stereotype” be replaced by a polyglot character with reassigned powers?

2. The Role of Natural History Museums in Preserving Biodiversity and Cultural Heritage

Natural history museums, which are equipped with the most prominent collections of species on Earth, have recently broadened their mission to include a role in meeting the challenges presented by the current biodiversity crisis. Patterns of change are discernible from such specimens and are prompting many museums to question how they can help fill data gaps for different parts of the world and better understand the evolution of life. As a result, some museums are rethinking priorities for their own research collections, digitizing collections and creating new ways to interface with them, collaborating to prioritize new collecting activities, and engaging the public in the growing excitement that comes from efforts to document the full range of life on Earth. Decreasing biodiversity might imply that less will be known about life on Earth in the near future, a strange state of affairs given that many of the people, environments, and species that will come under sustained pressure by the global economy will not be represented in museums.

Scientists and museums share a common trait: the need to create order from the chaos. For centuries, naturalists have been collecting and preserving biodiversity and, in the process, establishing the foundation for the science of taxonomy and classification. The collective holdings of museums worldwide contain more than a third of a billion catalogued specimens, specimens with enough geographic and temporal span to provide a basis for comprehensive studies of ecological and evolutionary patterns. Just as important, the specimens and associated data are curated by professional scholars with an intimate knowledge of biodiversity, who make resources available worldwide for further research and education.

3. Exhibits and Collections: Showcasing the Diversity of Life

Many natural history museum exhibits mix elements of morbidity, educational value, and entertainment. These displays can feature real skeletons, “flesh” (colored, flexible plastic muscles typically cast from a real object), and often “action” settings, such as savagely feasting or screaming at competitors. These often are more eye-catching and appealing than skeletal displays of simply quiescent animals. We do not mean to belittle visitors nor to suggest that they are expecting glitzy, Hollywood-like affairs when they go to a natural history museum. Indeed, the tone that suggests that real science can often be as fascinating as science fiction is easily accommodated and indeed reflected in reality-based museum displays. For better or worse, at many important museums, several such exhibits are quite popular.

Unlike many other types of museums, natural history museums are unique in that they exhibit both the products of sample-based collections and offer tangible connections to the diverse organic world around us. In a typical museum, visitor attention is often monopolized by the exhibits on display, and in a natural history museum, these artifacts can take many forms. For example, a zooarchaeological exhibit may consist of several large skeletons framed against an artificial space intended to mimic the ecological niche in which the animal lived and died.

4. Educational Programs and Outreach Initiatives

The appreciation of natural history is important for the individual and for society as a whole. Natural history is critical to the foundation of more specific disciplines and their contributions to vital human concerns such as fully understanding the Earth, improving human health, and developing sustainable practices amidst a world increasingly challenged by the struggles of ecosystem support for an exploding human population. As a result, efforts to maintain this competency are used as criteria in the award process of grants and private donations requested by museums exhibiting natural history in addition to appreciating its value making the disciplines of natural history studies valuable to the public through the many scientific questions posed by museum research.

As governments and NGO collaboratives are looking to the museum community to help fill educational gaps and to ensure that future generations develop necessary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competencies, museums and curators are working together to develop and maintain educational programs and outreach efforts. Museums throughout the world are being awarded coalitions, grants, and initiatives that are getting recognized for increasing accessibility and developing engaging experiences that represent the sum of activities that engage visitors in conversations answering the questions: “What is the evidence?”, “What can we learn from the data?”, and “How do we know?”. Non-research staff, volunteers, and specially qualified teachers often fill positions with the responsibility of creating learning experiences that communicate not only the natural story of diversity preserved within museum research collections, but also the methods and techniques that researchers use to document, explore, and interpret the data contained in the collections.

5. Future Trends and Innovations in Natural History Museums

Natural history museums are beginning to recognize that visitors come with their own questions and, in many cases, their own answers and insights about what they see. Visitors are, after all, naturalists themselves and have informal as well as formal understanding of the natural world. Additionally, if museums listen closely, they can learn that visitors deeply value museums as places of community where states, nations, and populations of the natural world are honored. In these significant but more casual conversations, museum visitors also tell us that they value our scientific and educational work and have much to contribute themselves. Our challenge is to leverage this informal learning and, where appropriate, more formal learning focusing on our scientific and public engagement missions.

Museums continue to adapt in combination with the world around them, seeking new ways to maintain their relevance to larger and more diverse audiences. Key trends in the innovation of natural history museums over the next decade will result from growing and varied interest in the natural world as well as economic and technological advances. Here we identify some major trends and opportunities in natural history museums for the next decade, showcasing examples where possible. Most institutions are beginning to put into practice one or more of these trends or are planning to do so as part of their strategic planning.