Over 500,000 specimens
From snails to whales, algae to mahogany, our collections preserve an astonishing range of species illustrating the breadth and complexity of our Earth's biodiversity.
New Exhibits
Visit our new exhibit space!
Morrill II, Room 146 is now open!
Monday-Friday, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, September 24 - December 18
Abundant in Drift by Maggie Nowinski
September 20 - December 6, University Museum of Contemporary Art
Our newest installation resulting from our collaboration with the University Museum of Contemporary Art.
Incorporating elements of her own artistic practice with new works created for the exhibition, Maggie Nowinski responds to the Herbarium’s collection of more than a quarter million dried and mounted plant specimens from around the world, collected between 1800 and the present. Nowinski transforms the North Gallery into a fantastical environment including audio field recordings, drawings derived from microscope observations of specimens to imagined biological hybrids, memorial cairns, PANACEA an "Impossible Plant" and a portal/light box micro-macro-magic informed by various herbarium, living plant, and vertebrate specimens housed on the UMass campus.
Nowinski’s exhibition highlights the importance of protecting and celebrating these priceless collections in relation to their current and future capacity for knowledge and memory in the context of our climate reality.
Rib bone of Staccato, North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), UMass Natural History Collections. Photograph by Stephen Petegorsky
The University Museum of Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the UMass Natural History Collections hosted artist Courtney M. Leonard, a citizen of the Shinnecock Nation of Long Island, for a multi-year artist residency, resulting in BREACH:LOGBOOK 24 I Staccato, an exhibit that explores marine biology, Indigenous food sovereignty, migration, and human environmental impact through visual logbooks that investigate the multiple definitions of the term "breach.” The exhibit includes paintings, sculptures, and video based on the life and kinship ties of Staccato, a North Atlantic Right Whale killed by a ship strike in 1999, whose remains are housed in the UMass collections.
Watch for events announcing the reopening of the exhibit on September 19 on the University Museum of Contemporary Art website.
