Explore What You Can’t Normally See at the Museum

The Botany Department Herbarium at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, displaying algae specimens, including coraline algae, wet specimens and the usual herbarium sheets. Featured researchers: Dr. James Norris (right, front), his research assistant Bob Sims (left, front), and associate researcher, Katie Norris (left, back).

Have you ever thought about how on earth a museum can store all of the pieces they’ve exhibited over the years? Like a whale? Or thousands of tiny beetles, or pieces of dried plants hundreds of years old? 

What you see in a museum exhibit is far from all it has to offer.

Take the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. In its incredible storerooms that house much of the Smithsonian’s collections, the museum’s ‘Employees Only’ doors are open for a marvelous sneak peek--online, that is.

Here are colorful glimpses of different departments with their respective scientists showing what is closed to the public. 

Entomology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Anthropology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Botany. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Vertebrate zoology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Paleobiology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Invertebrate zoology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Botany - Algea. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Mineral sciences. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Anthropology. Chip Clark/Smithsonian

 

Mammals - whale. Chip Clark/Smithsonian