Natural Curiosity Exhibit, McKissick Museum, SC
USC and the Evolution of Scientific Inquiry into the Natural World
Aug 20, 2008
Since colonial times South Carolina has been a footpath for amateur and professional naturalists enamored with the rich biodiversity found here. Faculty members and naturalists have contributed to the natural history collections at the University of South Carolina.
Motives for Collecting
The exhibit explores the multiple psychological motives for collecting and exemplifies the social, economic, intellectual, and spiritual purposes. For example, finding gold ore prompted the establishment of the Haile Gold Mine. Souvenir collectors took vast quantities of sand dollars from the coastline to make Christmas ornaments. Scholars used mineral, fossil and herbarium collections to educate students and conduct research.
Expect to See
Visitors will find both familiar and far out collections. Children will delight in the taxidermy specimens of bobcat, barn owl, grey fox, raccoon and black bear. The full length mounted eastern diamondback rattlesnake from Beaufort is the largest of its kind ever found. Look overhead to see an alligator and gannet. Imagine bison at the beach after viewing the bison bones from Edisto and Myrtle Beach shores. Two insect collections model how to properly display and preserve specimens: Rudy Mancke’s dragonfly collection and Richard B. Dominick’s moth collection. An extensive rock and mineral collection specifies tests to perform on minerals to determine their identity. Pressed specimen pages of plant parts from the A.C. Moore herbarium on campus are presented along with naturalist’s tools like hand lenses, journals, and the Peterson and Golden Nature field guides.
Methods of Display
How best to display artifacts is a challenge faced by individuals and institutions. Specimens are displayed in a variety of ways showing different exhibition formats from boxes of items like shells, amber, and bones; Riker mounts; wet displays of preserved animals; lighted glass shelving; to fine wooden curio cabinets housing rocks, minerals, and fossils behind glass windows. A tableau or three-dimensional model depicting how selected plants and animals might have interacted in the real world, popular in Victorian times, has been recreated.
The exhibit prompts discussion on how to collect and preserve specimens without depleting the natural treasures. Naturalists keep journals and diaries, sketch and paint wildflowers and birds, and photograph wildlife. Some compile catalogs listing all known species, for example, of birds.
Interactive for Children
Since children are inveterate collectors of pine cones and pebbles, sea shells and seed pods, and feathers and fossils, the exhibit permits them to build their own “natural science cabinet” of curiosities with moveable models replicating specimens on display.
Meet a Naturalist
At the back of the exhibit hall peer into a naturalist’s office through a set design from the popular Nature Scene television series hosted by Rudy Mancke, distinguished lecturer in natural history at USC. Clues to the naturalist’s mind at work cover the desk – owl feather, snake skin, amethyst, whelk, turtle shell, coquina. Since contemporary amateur naturalists learn about the world through media of film and television, three segments of nature documentaries are shown in a darkened corner of the museum to stimulate dialog on nature and the role humans play in the natural world.
Walk through an exhibit that surveys 200 years of collecting and walk away with an appreciation of South Carolina’s natural heritage.
McKissick Museum is free and open Monday through Friday from 8:30a.m.-5:00p.m. and Saturday from 11:00a.m.-3:00p.m. For more information, call 803-777-7251.
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