The Beaty Biodiversity Museum’s ambitious project, 100 Years, 100 Treasures, is about celebration. It celebrates the heart of the museum’s collection, the history that brought it together, and the community that makes it all happen.
The Beaty Biodiversity Museum has roots that stretch back through the entire history of the University of British Columbia, starting with the creation of the UBC Herbarium in 1916 by John Davidson. We celebrated this milestone with the launch of 100 Years, 100 Treasures, which opened the museum’s cabinets to highlight 100 spectacular natural history specimens from across the collections, as chosen by the curators. These treasures represent the complexity of the museum’s collection of over 2 million specimens, and include the largest creature that has ever lived – the blue whale – the extinct passenger pigeon, and specimens as old as the university, among many others.
Once the 100 specimens were chosen, the public was invited to participate by contributing their reflections about the treasures. From stories and poems, to songs and videos, our community delivered an unbelievable amount of creativity inspired by the heart of the collection. This was all compiled onto the website beatytreasures.com where the public could view the treasures and the community reflections about each piece. A special voting-booth style exhibit was set up in the museum gallery where visitors could browse all 100 treasures and the community reflections on each piece – and then we asked you to vote on your favourite treasure overall.
After months of voting, the votes have been counted and the top ten treasures are displayed in a special exhibition. The 100 Years, 100 Treasures exhibit aims to honour the winning treasures, but also walk the visitor through the history of the six different collections at the BBM, and how they tie into the one hundred year history of UBC.
In a special feature, museum visitors have the opportunity to continue adding to the content of the exhibit by sharing their own special treasures, or favourite specimen in the collection. Photos shared on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #MyBeatyTreasure will be streamed live on a screen in the exhibit. This is a unique opportunity to for visitors to participate in an ongoing exhibit and continues the community-curated aspect of this project, which has been integral since the beginning.
100 Years, 100 Treasures will be on display at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum until May 28th, 2017.
