The UW-Madison Geology Museum celebrated its 175th anniversary over the last few months with many new exhibits – but how does it create its famous displays?
Attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year, the Geology Museum at UW-Madison is a campus icon. Featuring lustrous crystals, Cretaceous dinosaur fossils, and a Dane County meteorite, the museum uses geological marvels to make the science accessible to the wider public.
“[The museum] does everything! It’s got an education mission, it’s teaching, it’s research, it’s got public communication and outreach.”
Rich Slaughter, Museum Director
Beyond the beautiful displays, the effort behind the museum’s scenes makes its mission possible.
To build its displays, the museum starts by obtaining samples, most of which come from geology students’ and staff’s fieldwork. Others are donations, typically from lifelong mineral collectors who want their collection to continue sparking joy. A rare few are bought or traded from other collections, and the rest are single-sample donations from the community.
After obtaining the samples, the museum works to preserve them. First, it numbers its specimens and repairs them as needed, often with reversible glue mixtures that won’t impede future studies. The samples then go to storage, where they’re kept at consistent temperature and humidity levels until the museum finds a use for them.
For fragile fossils, the museum designs custom foam cradles that evenly support the sample and minimize the risk of damage. Other samples require more exotic means of preservation, like a set of Ice Age antlers researchers found in Iowa. The antlers had been submerged in a river for millennia and risked cracking when they dried out, forcing the museum to slowly and carefully air-dry them.
Having ensured the sample’s preservation, the museum then faces its most daunting challenge: choosing samples for its exhibits. Since they’re intended to appeal to as many people as possible, the exhibits must also strike a balance between scientific depth and basic comprehensibility.
“We try to put out things that have visual appeal… [or] that have a great story,” Slaughter says. “What we’re really trying to do is make people feel curious.”
Practical considerations are also important – sometimes the museum just doesn’t have enough space to display a specimen – but the main goal is accessibility. Slaughter and the museum staff know that overloading guests with paragraphs and paragraphs of geological theories will only dissuade them from wanting to learn more.
“I always give people a promise I’ll put it to the best use I possibly can,” Slaughter says about donations. Whether they find their way into a museum display, scientific lab, or the hands of a curious young student, all of the museum’s samples serve its mission of making geology accessible.
This mission does not stop at the museum’s doors. Over the decades of its existence, the museum has hosted community outreach events to spread the wonders of geology. As Slaughter says, “We’ve been doing [outreach] for a long time here, way before it was cool.”
In the 1940s, the museum wrote geology-inspired plays that were performed in schools and read to crowds of over one hundred children. More recent museum events have taken a whimsical turn. Notable recent outreach events include a 15-acre geology-themed cornfield maze built with the help of a local farmer in Lodi, Wisconsin and an astrobiology baseball game with the voice actor of Star Wars’ General Grievous as the announcer.
These efforts show the museum’s continuing dedication to making geology accessible, while its history highlights the strong foundation that makes it possible. The museum was founded in 1848, mere months after UW-Madison itself. 175 years after a series of startup donations created its initial collection, the museum is still going strong and is celebrating with a series of new exhibits.
“We have been a part of this campus from the beginning,” Slaughter says. With over a thousand visitors enjoying its exhibits each week and unforgettable outreach events fueling its presence in the Madison community, the museum continues to fulfill its mission through its 175th anniversary and beyond.