What's in a Name?

Now Open

Included with any admission.
Floor 4, Gilder Center, Alcove Gallery inside the Gottesman Research Library

Ilustration of flowers and plants.
ptc-4823 AMNH Library
In science, the name of a species is never just a name.

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.

Small room with glass cases on either side containing illustrations and books.
Alvaro Keding/© AMNH

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.

Reserve Tickets »
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.

Illustration of tree of life. Diagram of the earliest iconography of genealogical relationships among articulated invertebrates after the Darwinian revolution in Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie der Organismen
QH351 .H3 1866/AMNH Library
Artwork comprised of a large beetle with tiny airplane wings and missiles attached to it. Text reads "Withus Oragainstus". 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