Home Industries Nonprofit Behind the scenes: Milwaukee Public Museum

Behind the scenes: Milwaukee Public Museum

Tiger moths are part of MPM’s collection of 290,000 specimens of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies).
Tiger moths are part of MPM’s collection of 290,000 specimens of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). Credit: Jake Hill

Tucked away inside Milwaukee Public Museum’s 400,000-square-foot building – behind the “Streets of Old Milwaukee,” the Puelicher Butterfly Garden and displays of ancient artifacts and life-size dioramas – staff and researchers are hard at work keeping Wisconsin’s natural history alive.  In a lab on the fourth floor, postdoctoral research fellow Nick Dowdy extracts DNA from

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Tucked away inside Milwaukee Public Museum’s 400,000-square-foot building – behind the “Streets of Old Milwaukee,” the Puelicher Butterfly Garden and displays of ancient artifacts and life-size dioramas – staff and researchers are hard at work keeping Wisconsin’s natural history alive. 

In a lab on the fourth floor, postdoctoral research fellow Nick Dowdy extracts DNA from tiger moths. Meanwhile, collection and digitization manager Alyssa Caywood is overseeing a years-long effort to create a digital record of all 4 million objects across MPM’s collections. Taking inventory is especially crucial as the MPM prepares to move into a new facility in 2026. 

“It’s going to be a huge process, with a lot of moving wheels. That’s going to need a lot of detail-oriented people who are invested in dotting i’s and crossing t’s in order to just make sure that things move safely from here to there,” said Caywood.

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