More than 600 specimens and cultural objects from every state, the District of Columbia and five inhabited U.S. territories anchor a new long-running Smithsonian exhibition.
‘From These Lands: Sharing Our Natural and Cultural Heritage’ opened June 18 at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington and is scheduled to remain through December 2029.
The exhibition covers 5,000 square feet. The museum says many of the objects are rare or have not previously been displayed.
Displays pair natural specimens with cultural materials to examine how people identify with place. State symbols include birds, flowers, shells, rocks, gems and fossils.
A section on shorelines draws connections across ocean coasts, Great Lakes and territories. Sixteen of the 23 states with ocean coastlines have official state shells, the museum noted.
The show also uses mollusks to move beyond a simple coastal frame: more than 100,000 species live in oceans, rivers, lakes, land and trees.
Objects come from a Smithsonian natural-history collection of roughly 148 million specimens and artifacts. The exhibition is selective rather than a comprehensive account of every place.
The institution framed the show around the United States' 250th anniversary, but its four-year run gives it a life beyond the anniversary season.
The central curatorial choice is to treat natural and cultural heritage as connected. Visitors still need to distinguish the symbolic examples from complete histories of the communities and ecosystems represented.