New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden will design, fabricate, and evaluate a new exhibition entitled, "Nature's Artifacts: Secrets of the Steere Herbarium," to highlight the importance of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium and its 7.4 million preserved plant specimens. The exhibit will explore herbarium specimens as museum objects and historical artifacts that contain irreplaceable scientific data, and draw attention to how biological collections can help answer questions about our everyday life, communities, and environment. The garden will hold a scholarly symposium, curator-led tours, and hands-on education activities for children. The project will inform best practices for developing compelling public exhibitions on biological collections and help to strengthen and communicate to the public the garden's position as a leading plant research institution that plays an active role in global biodiversity conservation.