Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990 TAG: 9005040541
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
From 1968 to 1970, Kosztarab, an entomology professor, and Perry Holt, then a Tech zoology professor, belonged to a Virginia Academy of Sciences committee on state science museums.
After public hearings in several Virginia cities, the committee "recommended that we should have a science museum in Richmond and a natural history museum in Southwest Virginia - Southwest Virginia because VPI had collections already," said Kosztarab (pronounced kost-ah-rab).
The General Assembly established the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond in 1970. But it wasn't until April 21 that a branch of the Virginia Museum of Natural History opened at Virginia Tech.
Still, Kosztarab, co-director of the branch facility, isn't complaining.
"This is a 20-year-old dream of mine that came true . . . and I am happy to be a part of it," he said in an interview.
A former theater in downtown Blacksburg now houses the university's insect, bird and mammal collections of more than 700,000 specimens. And those are just a third of the university's holdings, Kosztarab said.
Collections of vascular (flowering) plants, fossil plants and animals, fungi, minerals and gemstones are housed in Tech's Deering Hall. For now, those 260,000 specimens will remain in Deering. There simply isn't enough room to adequately store them at Tech's Museum of Natural History, Kosztarab said.
But the Main Street building, just across from the Tech campus, is a marked improvement over previous storage facilities. For many years, the bird and mammal collections were stored in a warehouse about four miles from the Tech campus. Other collections were scattered through various buildings around the campus.
The inadequate storage facilities made it difficult to use the specimens for research and teaching. Lack of exhibit space meant the university couldn't use its collections "for public education - schoolchildren and so forth," Kosztarab said.
The new museum addresses some of those needs. The lobby of the former theater has been converted into two large exhibit rooms. The large room in which audiences once watched films and chomped popcorn is now a storage area for collections not on display. Museum curators will have offices on the building's second floor.
But it is only a beginning, said Kosztarab, a professor at Tech since 1962.
"Our long-range plans are to house under one roof all the collections" - that's more than 1 million specimens. Virginia Tech has been collecting natural history specimens since 1888, and "we are proud that we maintained this collection," he said.
But the ambitions don't end there. "Our dream is to have mobile exhibits, to reach out into culturally deprived areas . . . to take our message and materials to the people," Kosztarab said.
In particular, the state's children should be taught about the importance of preserving Virginia's past - and future - through natural history, Kosztarab added. "Our museum could be a big help in that."
At a reception held the evening before the museum's public opening, Pete Boisseau, chairman of the Virginia Museum of Natural History's board of trustees, also emphasized the importance of natural history education. "If we're going to have a better understanding of our environment, it's going to require increased understanding of the original science - natural history," he said.
The Virginia Tech branch museum took a step toward those goals when it opened, said Jack Cranford, associate professor of biology and curator of the university's mammal collection. "This is the beginning of the future, the beginning of something that needed to be done for 100 years."
Since it opened last month, the museum's floor for rotating exhibits has showcased an exhibit called "Diversity Endangered." The exhibit uses university specimens, photographs, illustrations and informative posters from the Smithsonian Institute to examine the deterioration and destruction of certain species.
Specimens of endangered or extinct species, such as the California Condor and passenger pigeon, are displayed. Another part of the exhibit displays insects one might see in a tropical rain forest. Another highlights the types of garbage found in our society, and its implications for our environment.
"Steps in Time," an exhibit of fossilized dinosaur tracks from a stone quarry near Stevensburg, also can be viewed at the branch museum. The exhibit is on loan from the main museum in Martinsville.
The university's Benson Collection of large mammals - including a young grizzly bear and the mounted heads of moose and bison - is on permanent display in the museum's main exhibit room.
The museum's hours are limited to weekends because its staffers - including Kosztarab, co-director Stephen Scheckler and Susan Eriksson, who directs Tech's Museum of Geological Sciences - are all working on a volunteer basis.
After receiving a number of requests from school groups, the museum staff plans to open the museum to the public on weekdays before the school year ends. And Kosztarab, who will be named museum director July 1, hopes to get his part-time staff on a museum payroll soon.
The museum has been an important undertaking for many at Virginia Tech, said Eriksson, who had a major role in preparing exhibits for its opening. "This was really a labor of love," she said.
by CNB