The Beauty of Imperfections

As I hover over our summer assistant, I assure her that the occasional lost butterfly antenna or crushed leg of a beetle will ultimately be a nonfactor in admitting her "pinnings" into our insect collection. After all, there is no perfection in museum preservation. The established collection is rife with disfigurements, whether a delicate leg was crushed during the pinning process or a wing was already beaten into tatters with each dying thrust of an aging moth's flight. Each specimen's imperfections become stories left behind from the past.

Standardized preparation and storage practices have certainly allowed for museum folks to strive towards everlasting perfection, but eventual degradation and spoilage of all specimens is unavoidable. Light, water, and interaction are essential to life and also agents of demise. Protecting our specimens from those environmental factors only delays the process. 

So no matter how carefully Kelly collects and positioned those insects, or how much I hover, each part of our collection will carry a unique backstory or scar and in the end become the sum of their damages. And as I persist in reminding myself of that fact, I also draw beauty from that notion that all life (and death) in the natural world is as unique as it is ephemeral.