A Night At The Museum?

No, not just a night. A busy Friday morning. The Georgia Museum of Natural History just got a lot bigger. Museum workers and volunteers from Friends of the Museum unloaded three large trucks full of specimens. Marine mammals, whale and porpoise skeletons took up most of the space. The collection includes large mammals, flying foxes from Vietnam, bears, carnivores and many others.

Also, a collection of bird specimens that once belonged to American ornithologist A. C. Bent. He authored the series, Life Histories of North American Birds. Curator Betsy Reitz said, “Audubon drew them, but Bent described them.”

There’s more specimens yet to come.

This collection had been amassed by curator Gwilym Jones at Northeastern University at Boston. He’s retiring, and the University has other plans for his space. Luckily, the Georgia Museum found out about it and acquired his collection.

Good for the Georgia Museum, but bad for Northeastern University? It worries me – this is the third major collection that Director Bud Freeman has recently brought home, when other Institutions no longer wanted them. I’m glad we have them, but what does this say about the future of scientific collections?

These collections are a record of our environmental history, of flora and fauna past, irreplaceable and invaluable. I understand the costs of maintaining – curating – scientific collections, and institutions must make choices in today’s hard financial times.

Giving away your heritage – is that a good choice?

Dac Crossley
My 29,2013

“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” – Arnold Toynbee.

Comments

[Paige]

And what fun it was to see box after box, rib after jaw bone after spinal disc! What a wonderful collection!

[Mac]

Near and dear to my heart too, and a brief comment on what Shirley said. Although I do really believe in the importance of studying cultural history, I do think there's an important difference between natural history specimens and regular history. The specimens in a natural history museum can't lie, or revise, or cast themselves in a more favorable light. They can only be what they are, which is a record of an organism or artifact that was present at a specific location at a specific time, and with the physical, chemical and biological make-up that tells the story of what conditions were like. There is no accurate replacement for this kind of information.

[Mike Draney.]

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. My spider collection keeps growing, threatening to overwhelm me, but I've always taken comfort knowing I can give it to a good museum. Then this year I was disturbed to find the Field Museum in such bad sorts that they might not be able to take my collection! What then? No question about it, natural history specimens get more valuable over time...there's no more where THOSE came from!

[shirley white]

So glad Georgia Museum of Natural History was able to house this collection. Yes, it is necessary for us to know and study the past, natural history and otherwise!