Natural Curiosity

Humans possess a fascination with the natural world around them. We always have. From the 32,000-year-old cave paintings of horses in France to the giraffe stickers today's children paste into their activity books, we can see that humans are eager to see, touch, collect, and understand nature.

This exhibition explores this curiosity about nature by asking questions about why we collect natural specimens and artifacts, how we display them, and what they tell us about our relationship with and obligations to the natural world. Through an examination of approaches to building and maintaining the natural science collections at the University of South Carolina, this exhibition also offers a glimpse of the impressive array of specimens collected and displayed over the past 200 years for the purposes of education, research, and even entertainment.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website