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11 votes
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The Museum of Science and Industry abruptly closed for a day last week to allow it to move “military artifacts from archival storage”
26 votes -
Volvo is celebrating its 97th birthday with the opening of what it calls "World of Volvo" in the company's hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden
7 votes -
Tour of Vienna's Natural History Museum in Austria. It houses one of the oldest natural history collections in the world, dating back to the 1700's.
3 votes -
Petition launched to save Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum from demolition
28 votes -
Bellevue, WA police responded to a call from a US Air Force museum that said a man had offered to donate a Cold War-era missile stored in his late neighbor’s garage
12 votes -
History in ink: Preserving the world’s largest cartoon and comic collection
8 votes -
Six Flags | Bankrupt
12 votes -
Sweden's most popular tourist attraction, a 17th-century vessel that foundered minutes after launch, needs another financial rescue
11 votes -
The Brain Scoop relaunch!
14 votes -
Skateboard exhibition displays their elevated style
6 votes -
A replica of a boat that carried Danish Jews to safety in Sweden anchors an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC
12 votes -
Pokemon x Van Gogh Museum exhibit opens today
14 votes -
Two men exonerated thirty years after wrongful conviction thanks to retrocomputing enthusiasts and The Bloop Museum extracting data from a damaged floppy disc
60 votes -
Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?
22 votes -
Searching for Maura
9 votes -
The Baťa Skyscraper in Zlín, Czechia is a landmark of architecture. And inside it, the office of Jan Antonín Baťa... is an elevator.
13 votes -
On this day nineteen years ago, Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' was stolen in broad daylight from an Oslo museum
14 votes -
Israeli proposal to move early Christian mosaic to US Museum of the Bible sparks controversy
17 votes -
‘His name was Bélizaire’: Rare portrait of enslaved child arrives at the Met
21 votes -
How the ultrawealthy use private foundations to bank millions in tax deductions while giving the public little in return
37 votes -
How RVs get their swishes, swooshes, and swoops
5 votes -
Specimens are deteriorating at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods; this neglect could interfere with research
https://undark.org/2023/07/05/neglect-of-a-museums-collection-could-cause-scientific-setbacks/ IN A DUSTY ROOM in central Florida, countless millipedes, centipedes, and other creepy-crawlies sit...
https://undark.org/2023/07/05/neglect-of-a-museums-collection-could-cause-scientific-setbacks/
IN A DUSTY ROOM in central Florida, countless millipedes, centipedes, and other creepy-crawlies sit in specimen jars, rotting. The invertebrates are part of the Florida State Collection of Arthropods in Gainesville, which totals more than 12 million insects and other arthropod specimens, and are used by expert curators to identify pest species that threaten Florida’s native and agricultural plants.
However, not all specimens at the facility are treated equally, according to two people who have seen the collection firsthand. They say non-insect samples, like shrimp and millipedes, that are stored in ethanol have been neglected to the point of being irreversibly damaged or lost completely.
When it comes to how the FSCA stacks up with other collections she’s worked in, Ann Dunn, a former curatorial assistant, is blunt: “This is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Experts say the loss of such specimens — even uncharismatic ones such as centipedes — is a setback for science. Particularly invaluable are holotypes, which are the example specimens that determine the description for an entire species. In fact, the variety of holotypes a collection has is often more important than its size, since those specimens are actively used for research, said Ainsley Seago, an associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
A paper published in March 2023 highlighted the importance of museum specimens more generally, for addressing urgent issues like climate change and wildlife conservation, with 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums estimating their total collections to exceed 1.1 billion specimens. “This global collection,” the authors write, “is the physical basis for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it.”
9 votes -
America's music road: Go on a glorious 350-mile drive that embraces the entire history of popular music, from gospel to soul to jazz to country to rock
9 votes -
Neglect of a museum’s collection could cause scientific setbacks at Florida State
12 votes -
What is a blue moon and when is the next one?
12 votes -
All of Vincent van Gogh's 1515 paintings and drawings
19 votes -
Why these old Japanese vending machines are genius
14 votes -
The secret world of Japan's puzzle masters
3 votes -
Top-secret atomic bunker has opened to the public in Denmark – built to withstand a nuclear attack, it's now an astonishing subterranean museum
6 votes -
Hoard of 1,000-year-old Viking coins unearthed in Denmark – artefacts believed to date back to 980s found by girl metal-detecting in cornfield last autumn
12 votes -
We need more nuance when talking about repatriation
5 votes -
The Museum of Failure’s latest exhibition is an epic portrait of failures big and small—from the Ford Edsel, to CNN+
4 votes -
The art of the copyist
3 votes -
Matteo Lane & Nick Smith go to the Museum of Sex
5 votes -
The National Museum of Denmark is paying tribute not to professional archaeologists, but to amateurs with metal detectors
3 votes -
The year’s biggest art shows and exhibitions
5 votes -
Researchers look a dinosaur in its remarkably preserved face
12 votes -
Intact ancient papyrus scroll uncovered in Saqqara, the first in a century
5 votes -
Darwin's Barometer
3 votes -
Mondrian painting has been hanging upside down for seventy-five years
14 votes -
See the buzzworthy winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition
7 votes -
This 1970s tank simulator drives through a tiny world
8 votes -
Why (and how) over 600,000 bird specimens are preserved at the Smithsonian | Colossal Collections
4 votes -
A working flight simulator, no computers necessary
4 votes -
FBI raids Orlando museum and seized all twenty-five works in their Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition after an affidavit called into question their origin and their authenticity
5 votes -
Denmark opens Flugt refugee museum, recognizing the contribution refugees have made to the Nordic country
2 votes -
Oslo's vast National Museum opens with tapestry of 400 reindeer skulls – the ‘grey box’ has been eight years and £500m in the making
9 votes -
Mona Lisa targeted in Louvre cake-throwing attack. Famous work by Leonardo da Vinci wasn't damaged.
10 votes -
The race to save Ukraine’s sacred art
4 votes