A Night in the Museum Collections with Emily Graslie 

 

The Bell Museum was founded in 1872 to collect, preserve, and interpret Minnesota’s rich biological diversity. Since that time, our collections have expanded to 1.2 millions specimens of plants, fungi, lichens, mollusks and crustaceans, reptiles and amphibians, fishes, birds, and mammals from Minnesota and locations all around the world. Only a small fraction of these specimens are on display in the museum. Most of them are stored and cared for by our scientific curators in collection facilities on the St. Paul Campus. These specimens are used by curators, students, and researchers world-wide to study evolutionary history, document the consequences of global change, and understand the process of speciation. Join the Bell Museum’s scientific curators and host Emily Graslie for a special virtual program exploring the rare specimens, unique items, and rich stories found behind-the-scenes in the Bell’s natural history collection.

 

Emily Graslie is a science communicator and writer, video host, and educational media producer. From 2013 – 2020 she worked as the first-ever ‘Chief Curiosity Correspondent’ for the Field Museum in Chicago, creating more than 200 episodes for The Brain Scoop, a natural history-themed YouTube channel whose videos have been viewed tens of millions of times. In 2020 she made her broadcast television debut on PBS in Prehistoric Road Trip, an original three-part series exploring the paleontology and natural history of the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming — and in PBS Digital Studios’ limited program In Our Nature in 2021. Today, she’s independently producing ART LAB, a show about celebrating the intersections of art and science, in partnership with the Described and Captioned Media Program. Graslie has received numerous accolades for her work, including the American Alliance of Museum’s Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellence.