The Academy at 200:
The Nature of Discovery
Opening March 2012
Building on our extraordinary collections and two centuries of scientific exploration, The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery will celebrate the groundbreaking discoveries of the past and present and provide a glimpse into our future as one of the world’s greatest natural history museums. Through this spectacular new exhibit, visitors will journey alongside Academy scientists in search of new species and explore how humans are impacting our environment. Encounters with rare and amazing specimens from our collections and immersions into our labs and expeditions will provide answers to critical questions about biodiversity, pollution, and climate change. By joining in the excitement of scientific innovation, visitors will connect with the Academy’s commitment to shaping a sustainable future for our community and our planet.
Inside the Exhibit
The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery will offer visitors a one-of-a-kind opportunity to take a closer look at the Academy’s innovative research and unparalleled collections. When visitors enter the exhibit, they will come face-to-face with a stunningly arranged, wall-to-wall display of remarkable specimens, positioned around an enormous mount of our famed Irish elk. The specimens will be paired with beautifully designed cases that will offer notes on acquisition, identification, curation, and research. Through an examination of the specimens and accompanying information, visitors will gain an understanding of why the Academy’s collections are so big, why they are still growing, and how preserving items for study provides crucial knowledge about the natural world.
To the left of the specimens will be a spectacular depiction of the Academy’s 200-year history. A timeline of our key moments and discoveries, punctuated by wall-mounted, jewel-box cases of related artifacts such as Dr. Ruth Patrick’s Medal of Honor, will serve as a poignant reminder of our role in shaping scientific thought during the last two centuries. Down the center of the gallery, more objects from the Academy’s collections will be mounted for up-close examination. These touchable items include a meteorite, a cast of a fossil marine reptile, and a piece of brain coral.
The immersive experience will continue as visitors enter five rooms that depict our scientists in the lab and the field. Visitors young and old can take part in interactive studies, examine scientists’ tools, and learn more about how Academy scientists contribute to biodiversity and environmental research.
Highlights
- An 80-foot-long wall featuring an extraordinary sampling of the Academy’s more than 17 million specimens from nature
- An alcove highlighting an enormous, dramatically posed mount of our rarely seen Irish elk
- A graphically striking, 20-foot-long wall containing the Academy’s 200-year timeline
- Five behind-the-scenes rooms immersing visitors into our scientists’ workspaces and expeditions
- An exciting and educational Be a Scientist activity for younger guests
Science in Action
Visitors will look over the shoulders of Academy scientists as they travel the globe to encounter the natural world, seek to understand it, and help others learn from what they have found. The Academy’s historic successes, current studies, and future research will be the focus of five “behind-the-scenes” rooms featuring the environments in which Academy scientists do their work.
These environments will involve sets and props, ambient sound, videos, large-scale murals, cases featuring the scientists’ tools, and an array of interactive elements that will allow visitors to try their hands at scientific activities. The rooms also link historical references with current work. For example, we juxtapose John James Audubon’s science and artistry with our collection and preservation work in ornithology; Brooke Dolan’s explorations with our modern-day studies of climate change in Mongolia; and Dr. Ruth Patrick’s limnology with today’s research on water quality.
Immersive Environments
From a Mongolian yurt, visitors will embark upon a data-collection scavenger hunt to identify clues about climate change. Footage of interviews with Mongolian people, clothes fit for an expedition, and information on Academy explorer Brooke Dolan’s trips to Asia will complete the Academy afield experience.
Whether wading through a Barnegat Bay marsh or investigating the effects of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale Formation, visitors will find out how humans are changing the life-sustaining waters we depend upon. Visitors can take measurements to monitor sea level rise in the marsh, peer through a microscope to find out how drilling affects water quality, and examine important limnology items from the adventures of Dr. Ruth Patrick.
A dive underwater toward a shallow coral reef in the Bahamas will allow visitors to “collect” community samples of fishes and compare them to those sampled by Academy Ichthyologists James E. Böhkle and Charles Chaplin 40 to 60 years ago. Scuba gear, nets, maps, and photographs will acquaint visitors with the re-creation of this important work.
The Titanosaur bone lab is not just any office; visitors will soon join Academy scientists and the Father of American Vertebrate Paleontology, Joseph Leidy, in identifying fossils. A video featuring 3-D scans of rotating bones will add to visitors’ amazement as they check out a rock hammer, chisels, and other tools of the trade.
Inside a bird-skinning tent in the jungles of Southeast Asia, visitors will search for birds and check them off on an illustrated list. Mist nets, binoculars, expedition supplies, and bird-skinning tools will help visitors understand the modern-day collecting work of the Academy’s Ornithology Department, while a case featuring archival images will inform onlookers about John James Audubon’s vision of collecting, cataloging, and illustrating America’s birds.
