The Legacy of a Lifetime of Collecting: An Interactive Natural History Museum Exhibit

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the interactive natural history museum exhibit entitled The Legacy of a Lifetime of Collecting: The Carl & Marian Rettenmeyer Story. The exhibit uses digital animation and touch-interactive experiences to engage visitors in a hitherto under-recognized biological system and the life stories of the scientists who studied it. The late Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer devoted their lives to the study of the complex biological system formed by army ants and their hundreds of associated species known as “guests.” Over the course of fifty years of scientific field research in Central and South America they amassed the Army Ant Guest Collection, a world-class natural history collection consisting of over 2,000,000 specimens of army ants and their guests and accompanying field card documentation. A multidisciplinary team of scientists, artists, and museum exhibit designers with expertise in interactive technology, animation, and entomology came together to create an interactive exhibit inspired by the Army Ant Guest Collection. The exhibit illuminates the process of scientific research and discovery and the value of natural history collections by highlighting the biology of army ants and their guests alongside the life story of Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer. The exhibit's interactive experiences allow visitors to journey from field research in the jungle to the study of specimens in a natural history collection. This paper describes the background of the exhibit and the creative team that made it and details the exhibit design.