By Tai Crowell, Samantha Daggett, Bailey Kestell & William Soquet
Mary Ann Cofrin (MAC) Hall is one of the busiest buildings on campus. The instructional building was completed in 2001 and is utilized by several schools within the college, including the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Studies, the Austin E. Cofrin School of Business, and the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology. It serves as an important link, filling a gap between the Cofrin Library and the University Union. However, most students would be surprised to learn that the linchpin of MAC’s design was not any of these attributes – it was to house a pair of scientific collections. The Carl Richter Museum and the Gary Fewless Herbarium sit on the concourse level, tucked off the beaten path. Both offer a unique experience on campus, and the Richter holds a whole building’s worth of history inside its couple of rooms.
Carl Richter’s job was working for Wisconsin Public Service, but his passion was nature. Richter, who lived from 1903 to 1977, collected animal specimens during a transitory time in history. While there were still some regulations on specimen collecting, Richter was able to do many more things with a federal permit than outdoorsmen can do today. Additionally, he was in the egg-trading game, exchanging eggs as far away as South America. According to a 1996 edition of Inside UWGB magazine, UWGB student Thomas Erdman contacted Richter for help with some research and studies in the late 1960s or early 1970s. A few years later, in 1975, Richter donated his entire specimen collection to the museum, a move that de facto created the program that currently bears his name. Erdman transitioned into a faculty role with UWGB and served as the collection’s curator for about 30 years, most of that in Environmental Sciences Hall before MAC was opened.
The collection has not stayed stagnant since that initial collection, however. Everyone from oil giant Exxon to local governments has contributed to the growth of the collection. Daniel Meinhardt, current curator of the Richter Museum, says that UWGB’s campus situation also helps grow the collection on occasion. “Sometimes, birds fly right into the large windows we have here. Sometimes, you’ll walk through the arboretum and see some.” However, the collection’s growth is somewhat stymied by greater regulations now and a backlog of animals yet to be identified and entered into the collection’s database. Meinhardt notes that all animals that will be considered by the museum must have a date and place of discovery and definitive proof that the animal was not killed either illegally or unethically.
As curator, Meinhardt serves as the main point of contact for the museum, which is open by appointment only. The first visual sign of the museum is a patterned tile at the bottom of the grand staircase in MAC. The mosaic was commissioned during construction in honor of the museum and herbarium, although it is more on the abstract side. Following a couple right turns immediately at the bottom of the staircase and a short walk down a back hallway, a looming green sign hanging from the ceiling quietly announces to visitors that they’ve reached the museum’s entrance, an unassuming grey door. Visitors are greeted in the workroom. As the name implies, this roughly eight-by-twenty foot room serves as the hub for current special projects that the museum has in progress, including sending the occasional specimen on loan to other institutions. A door on the right side of the workroom reveals the freezer room, where animals and other objects that have not been preserved and processed yet wait to get cataloged by a museum worker.
A door on the left side of the workroom leads into the main collection room. Visitors are greeted with several aisles worth of eight-foot-high storage containers of various types, holding all different kinds of animals and specimens. One of the first attention grabbers is a taxidermied passenger pigeon sitting on a table close to the entrance. One of the poster animals for saving endangered species, the passenger pigeon, has been extinct for just over a century. While not predominantly associated with the Great Lakes, the pigeon was included in Richter’s collection from a trade with a woman in southern Wisconsin and remains a valuable asset for the museum. From there, visitors are guided to what their interests pull them to see. The array of preservation and storage techniques is vast. Amphibians are stored in alcohol mixtures in sealed jars. Eggs of all different colors and sizes are carefully nestled in felt-in bins. Birds and smaller mammals are stuffed and stored in glass-covered drawers similar to those of a large tool chest.
The museum’s collection itself mainly focuses on animals native to the Great Lakes, save for the rare tropical specimen that Richter acquired during his lengthy history as an outdoorsman. Richter gave the museum more than 10,000 sets of bird eggs in 1974; as of right now, the collection has more than 11,000 sets, ranking among the top ten largest in North America. Tens of thousands of animal specimens, covering all main branches of the Tree of Life, are also included in the museum collection. All bird species that breed in the region are featured, along with the majority of fish, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species that live in the Great Lakes region, with an emphasis on the region’s wildlife. Notable among the non-vertebrate animals are numerous local species of mollusks, spiders, and insects.
For a museum that is not open to the public at all, it holds a surprisingly large role in supporting the curriculum for multiple departments. Several biology courses utilize the museum and its vast collection, and a small lab down the hall allows for classes to spread out and conduct further research and learning. Without the collection, the hands-on experience would be hard to replicate for undergraduate students. The art department makes use of the museum as well in drawing and painting classes. The diverse array of colors, shapes, and proportions contained in the collection provides several practice opportunities for art students to hone their craft. Professor Lisa Wicka brought her Intermediate Drawing class to the Richter this fall and says that it is an opportunity to expand students’ horizons. “Being able to sit with the specimens and taking the time to observe and study them in their sketchbook is a valuable practice, encouraging them to slow down, train their eyes, understand the world around them, and then translate that into their work,” she says. “Some students can be hesitant at first, but mostly, they are excited to get up close to the wide variety of specimens that the collection has to offer. Some students then return to the museum on their own, working with Dan, to use specimens that fit their specific project interests across the many mediums we teach on campus.” A secondary function of the museum is that graduate students can use the collection to advance their academic research as well.
Public use of Richter specimens is not uncommon either. Everyone from local painters to woodcarvers to naturalists is able to use the museum to help them accomplish their specific end, whether it be a precise carving of an obscure bird or putting together a better idea of what wildlife in the area looked like several decades ago. According to Meinhardt, the Richter occupies a prominent place in the natural history museum scene in the area. “The Neville museum has some stuff, but the bigger collections are at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Milwaukee Public Museum, and the Center for Natural Resources at UW-Stevens Point,” he says.
Despite being a history museum, the Richter is constantly living and being maintained as more history is made. Meinhardt, a full-time faculty member at UWGB, divides his time evenly between being a museum curator and taking on a half-load of teaching. His efforts are supplemented by a handful of student workers, who combine to put in about an additional 40 hours of labor each week. Graduate student Chris Koch does much of his work in preserving specimens. “I am mostly in the alcohol room,” he explained. “This is where most of our specimens preserved with ethyl alcohol are stored. Even in well-sealed containers, alcohol [can still] evaporate.” Without a student worker to replenish evaporated alcohol, specimens can lose their integrity fast and become nearly unusable to the museum. Student workers also benefit simply from the experience that the work at the museum provides. Koch hopes to curate a natural history museum after graduation. Senior Natalie Hannemann, who just completed her third semester working at the museum, also touched on the applicability of museum work to her future plans. “Being able to organize specimens, keep track of data in [Microsoft] Excel, and take tissue samples will greatly help me with my future field research goals. Having the unique background of working in a natural history museum will also help me be competitive for future positions down the line.” She hopes to continue her education in graduate school and become a field researcher working with wolves.
A top-notch collection. A pillar of multiple academic programs. An opportunity for students to gain valuable field experience. The question naturally follows: why isn’t the museum more well-known across the campus community? Outside of the academic programs that directly come into contact with the museum, few students know it exists; fewer still know anything more than the name of the museum. For something that was central to the design of the building it partially occupies, there seems to be almost an absurdly low amount of recognition for it on campus.
An easy explanation at the surface level is that the museum is not open to the public. The easy answer to that question is that it’s not supposed to be open to the public. Lacking both a lobby and a full-time curator to service guests, the Richter is, by design, an academic-focused collection, not an entertainment-focused collection. Additionally, its location near the rear of MAC does the museum no favors. Perhaps the students need to get a little more curious and find it on their own, although that’s not really in anybody’s control. Meinhardt, for his part, is doing everything that he can control to get the museum in front of more eyeballs. He’s hosted open houses around Halloween, hoping that the theme of skeletons will entice potential visitors. He’s held classes for the Lifelong Learning Institute on campus, sharing the treasures of the collection with UWGB’s nontraditional students. He’s branched out into hosting grade school groups, hoping to inspire the next group of Phoenix students. He’s taken museum artifacts up to The Ridges sanctuary in Door County in an effort to gain more public awareness. Perhaps the most successful initiative to date was a 2019 project in collaboration with the Lawton Gallery on campus. Artists from around the country created works in various media based on artifacts in the Richter collection, which were featured as an exhibit in the Lawton called Museum of Natural Inspiration in September and October.
However, there remains work to be done. Meinhardt estimates that some of the display cases outside the doors of the museum are a couple decades old and in need of a refresh. These serve as the only form of physical advertising that the museum has for students who don’t see the inside. There are plans in the works to replace the faded photos and stories of old technology with an updated display. The museum does not have a dedicated social media presence, and it is one of several topics that the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity covers in its accounts. A bright spot is a robust website presence, which can be explored here.
Back inside the collection room, a small door at the end of an aisle opens to a back room filled with even more specimens. Sitting on top of the tallest row of shelves is a collection of antique cigar boxes. Legend holds that most of Richter’s original specimen collection was housed in cigar boxes, and curators have kept them around as a memento of the original era of the museum. The boxes are a metaphor for the Richter Museum. While tucked away in one of the busiest buildings on campus, the Richter serves an integral role in multiple academic programs on campus and is full of knowledge, even for those who do not need to utilize it for any specific reason. A gray door and cigar boxes both appear unassuming to the untrained eye, but for those who know, their contents remain a hidden treasure.
