Engaging With Insecta

The Insecta display was an experiment for me in many ways. Primarily, I had wanted to test our visitors when forced into strategically placed in close contact with some of our most contentious specimens - insects, ranging from flesh flies to stink bugs. Could visitors' perceptions of insects be shifted towards the positive if they encountered insects through a potentially new lens? 


I attempted to create an engaging display using two mediums - the specimens themselves and photos. I started by placing pinned insects in mandala-like arrangements. Then, I paired those with blown-up images captured by a digital microscope. It started out as much a hodgepodge art installation as natural history interpretation. But parallel concepts started to come together into a singular display.

With display cases perfectly populated by organized insect bodies and surrounded in a collage of colorful photos, I offered the display up to the public. 

Overall, I was pleased with the level of engagement this back hallway piece received. And I could have never anticipated how much visitors both ADORED and HATED insects.



Based on verbal exclamations heard across the building, I surmised that:

  • Beetles are shiny and beautiful
  • Beetles are shiny and gross
  • Nobody wants to encounter an eastern dobsonfly in any other manner
  • Everybody wants to encounter a live luna moth 
  • Adults and children were eager for the opportunity to hold space for conversations around insects and what they mean to us

I also gained more formal feedback when a Harvard Extension School course picked up the virtual version of this display for a visitor evaluation project. There were some fantastic suggestions for an improved virtual experience, as well as a partial answer to the initial question from the project's offset: "Did viewing Insecta make people curious about the insects around them?" With most of the viewers surveyed answering to some degree in the affirmative, I think the display made an impact I can be happy with as I now dismantle it for a new display.