Exhibit Showcases Additions to Collection

A stoneware ginger beer bottle, walrus bones, a straw hat...these items aren't what you'd expect to find in a museum's collection of treasures. Or are they?

Building Our Collection, Preserving Our Heritage is a new temporary exhibition at the Museum of Natural History Halifax until Feb. 7, 2005. The exhibit showcases a variety of artifacts and specimens that will help Nova Scotians better understand their rich natural and cultural heritage.

The exhibition highlights the work of experts in areas such as botany, zoology, cultural history collections and archaeology, whose work helps to tell the story of Nova Scotia's past.

Included in the exhibition are: a straw hat from Ross Farm that tells a story about the passing down of heritage skills from generation to generation; an oddly drawn porcupine tells a tale about a visitor to Halifax in 1749 and how people of the day learned about the natural world; herbarium sheets from the early 1800s and manuscripts from a publication called Curtis' Botanical Books that show what students of the time were learning about plant life in the province from educators such as Thomas McCulloch and Henry How.

A portrait of Susanna Francklin, by John Singleton Copley, is also included in the exhibit. Susanna was the wife of Michael Francklin, a colonial administrator, Indian agent, and lieutenant-governor in Nova Scotia in the late 1700s. The painting became part of the furnishings of Uniacke House, in Mount Uniacke, from the 1840s to 1927. The acquisition of the portrait is a story about how Nova Scotia Museum curators choose, locate, and research objects that are important additions to the provincial collection.