What's in a Name?
Ongoing Exhibition
Now Open
Included with any admission. Floor 4, Gilder Center - Alcove Gallery, David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center
In this inaugural exhibition in the new Alcove Gallery of the David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center, explore the history, significance, and challenges of scientific nomenclature, with a focus on insects, through rare books and other unique holdings from the Library's collections.
Learn about the history of classification, from Aristotle to Linnaeus to the present day, while viewing rare books and illustrated works of entomology from the 17th and 18th centuries, including by Maria Sibylla Merian, Pieter Cramer, and Ulisse Aldrovandi.
Included with any admission.
Gottesman Research Library is open Monday–Friday, 10:30 am–5:30 pm.
Modern holdings on view include a screen print by Andy Warhol depicting an endangered species of butterfly and a whimsical model of an animal based on a longhorn beetle and named Withus oragainstus, which was added to the Library's collection after it was surreptitiously displayed in the Museum's Hall of Biodiversity in 2005 by an unidentified artist.
Diagram of the earliest iconography of genealogical relationships among articulated invertebrates after the Darwinian revolution in Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie der OrganismenQH351 .H3 1866/AMNH Library
This whimsical model of an animal based on a longhorn beetle was surreptitiously displayed in the Museum's Hall of Biodiversity in 2005 by an unidentified artist.Denis Finnin/© AMNH