Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries

A new exhibition at Harvard's Museum of Natural History, Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries, invites visitors to explore specimens drawn from Harvard's vast natural history collections, most of which have never before been on public view. Of the 26 million specimens held behind the scenes at HMNH, the exhibition brings forward a striking selection: a massive polar bear, jewel-toned beetles, and objects that span billions of years and every continent, ocean, and beyond.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture, the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH), and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum (MGMH). Curators from across the museums selected specimens that continue to yield new scientific insight, connecting centuries-old collecting with ongoing research and teaching.

Among the highlights are two objects tied to the nation's founding era, presented to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on June 27. A pair of golden pheasants once kept in the aviary of France's King Louis XVI made their way to George Washington in 1786 as a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette, later passing into Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia museum. Nearby sits a Lewis's woodpecker collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition in present-day Idaho in 1806—the only complete specimen from the expedition to survive, and the type specimen used to formally describe the species.

Together, the objects on display trace a thread from eighteenth-century exploration to twenty-first-century discovery, showing how specimens collected generations ago continue to shape what scientists learn about life on Earth today.

Collecting Wonders: Tomorrow's Discoveries is on view from June 27, 2026 through April 2027