BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 17, 2023
After a 134-year run, the Portland Society of Natural History, and its museum, closed up shop in 1970. The museum’s vast collection of taxidermied animals, shells, fossils, minerals and amassed cultural items were scattered. But now, thanks to a seven-year detective odyssey by co-curators Tilly Laskey and Darren Ranco, some of the Natural History Museum’s long-separated items have been tracked down and reunited for a special exhibit at the Maine Historical Society. The exhibit, “Code Red: Climate Justice and Natural History Collections,” opens Friday, March 17 and runs through the end of the year. The new exhibit not only recreates the look of the old Portland museum; it places its curious collections within the contemporary context of climate change and waning biodiversity. The exhibition explores Indigenous environmental knowledge and the evolution of western scientific methods, as well.