All that most students see of the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum (UWZM), located in the Noland Zoology Building, is the fourth floor staircase’s sign prohibiting entrance from all other than museum staff.
Behind the locked doors, however, the museum’s extensive collections of animal skins and skeletons serve as a powerful resource for research and learning. They date back to the beginning of the university itself in 1848 and include extinct passenger pigeons, exotic animals confiscated from the pet trade and boxes of animal skeletons, just part of the museum’s nearly 750,000 specimens.
Although the museum’s collection is growing, it doesn’t have the staff or budget required to support the exhibits of a traditional museum, and it struggles with physical conditions like humidity that can damage specimens. Still, the UWZM manages to make its collections available to researchers and serve as a launching point for future curators.
Despite challenges, museum stays strong
The museum is staffed by a team of part-time student workers, a volunteer team formed mostly of retired staff and few full-time workers. Many of the volunteers are former researchers whose specialized knowledge base adds immense value to the work.
The main way UW-Madison students are involved in the museum is through museum studies internships, completed for credit in the Zoology 699 class. These students benefit from the museum’s extensive collections and tight collaboration with zoos and state and campus organizations. Interns first learn general practices for museum studies. Then, they can focus their internship on areas that align with their interests and unique skills.
Many former students go on to work part-time at the UWZM and pursue museum studies graduate programs.
“We actually have a former student who is now the preparator at the Smithsonian…We have a former student right now working at Cornell. We have a couple of students who have gone on to the American Museum,” Laura Monahan, the museum’s Distinguished Associate Director and Curator of Osteology, told The Daily Cardinal.
Museum internships offer a valuable learning experience for future curators. However, volunteers and interns who are in the process of learning can’t accomplish as much as a full-time workforce, and the museum’s lack of funding presents an additional barrier.
Monahan said the museum has just three full-time staff members, and its budget hasn’t increased in 45 years.
The museum relies on grants to cover much of its expenditure. Monahan was awarded the 2023 Regents Academic Staff Excellence Award in part for her ability to secure over $800,000 in grants for the museum.
These grants don’t fulfill all the museum’s needs, though, and the effects of UWZM’s funding limits are not isolated to staffing.
The UWZM sells zoological posters and puts the revenue back into education and exhibits, most of which are located on the second floor of Noland Hall. But the museum’s tight budget leaves no more room for outreach.
“We just don’t have the money to do exhibits,” Monahan said.
In addition, the UWZM’s environmental conditions must be carefully managed to preserve some of its delicate specimens. Noland Hall is not designed for this management. Staff must take care when categorizing, as well as simply walking through the museum, to preserve their specimens.
“We have temperature and relative humidity problems in our building, and that's what is most detrimental to our museum collections and their preservation,” Monahan said.
Relocating the museum would help with these issues, as well as increasing space, but that seems to be a possibility only in the distant future, requiring resources that the museum simply doesn’t have.
“If there ever is a new building, there is talk of putting exhibitions in the building, which we love,” Monahan said. “Again, we would need funding to make it happen…and we would need staff to make that happen.”
Despite these limitations, the museum continues to support new discoveries. In just 2024, UWZM loaned out 2,738 specimens for use in research. The museum allows the UW-Madison campus to continue to be a top performer in biological research and offer exceptional opportunities to students, supporting their learning and future.
A long legacy of science
The UWZM started from a directive by the 1848 University of Wisconsin Regents to establish a “Natural History Cabinet”. The museum moved from location to location before settling in the original Science Hall Building, which burned in 1884, decimating much of the collection.
Edward A. Birge, notable zoologist and eventual president of University of Wisconsin-Madison, played a crucial role in revitalizing the museum, collecting and purchasing exotic specimens to rebuild the museum in the new — and still-standing — Science Hall. The museum continued to move locations before finding its current home in Noland Hall.
The museum’s connections have allowed staff to collect exotic specimens from other countries, like in the 1970’s when a UW-Madison graduate student wanted to study Galapagos tortoises.
“We started a collecting agreement so that we could go down there and…collect things that were [already] dead and bring them back here and clean them up. Half of the specimens stayed here, and half of them went back down to Galapagos,” Monahan said.
Those specimens remain in the museum today, though that specific collecting agreement has expired. They include a set of Galapagos finch skulls, which are used in UW-Madison’s introductory biology labs.
“If you read introductory biology texts…you hear about Darwin and the work that he did [in the Galapagos]. We actually have specimens that we can put out in labs…so the students are reading about it, and they can see them,” Monahan said.
Today, the UWZM receives new specimens through partnerships with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, zoos and researchers. And they can always use more.
“We want to be able to look at the skeleton of a male, a female, [a] juvenile, [and an] adult and we want many examples of all of those so we can see what's typical,” Monahan said.
Looking back at the museum’s historical collections allows researchers to compare them to modern-day species. The museum also takes and holds specimens for researchers. Then, when a scientist publishes their work, depositing the specimens they used allows peers to repeat the study and check their work, Monahan explained.
