In this era of rapid environmental change, the animal, mineral, and plant specimens preserved in natural history collections offer a crucial window into the past. Around the world, natural history curators are digitizing their collections to offer scientists greater access for specimen-based research and the development of long-range datasets.

Jody Clowes, director of the Academy’s James Watrous Gallery, hosts a discussion about Wisconsin’s early specimen collectors and UW-Madison’s effort to make its own natural history collections available online with curators Ken Cameron, Laura Monahan, Craig Brabant, and Carrie Eaton, and artist Martha Glowacki, co-curator of Collections & Connections: 150 Years of the Wisconsin Academy, which was on view at the Watrous Gallery earlier in 2020.