Butterflies are taking wing on paper at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH), a month before the museum opens its summer exhibit of live butterflies.
A display of rare antique natural history prints depicting butterflies and moths are displayed alongside actual specimens in The Collectors: A Life in Lepidoptera, which opens April 24 in the John and Peggy Maximus Gallery.
“The life of a collector is obsession and passion,” said Maximus Gallery curator Linda Miller.
The Collectors: A Life in Lepidoptera traces that passion for collecting and studying butterflies and moths among naturalists, artists, and collectors from the early 18th century to the present day.
It begins with Maria Sibylla Merian, who risked life and limb for Lepidoptera in 1699. Setting sail from Holland for tropical Surinam, more than 4,000 miles away, she would return two years later bearing eyewitness studies of exotic butterflies and moths.
Merian’s subsequent book “Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium” (1705) turned those studies into ecological compositions showing these beautiful and diverse creatures in relation to their life cycles, habitats, and diets for the first time, the museum said.
The exhibit features Merian’s engraving of a Rothschildia silkmoth, its caterpillar and its pupa, all arranged around one of its preferred sources of food and shelter: the branch of a Seville orange tree.
“The art on display dates from a time when artists and naturalists began to see insects as a serious object of study,” Miller said. “The lives of these collectors reveal not only the beauty and mystery of butterflies, but the development of scientific thought over past centuries.”
Skilled artists with scientific understanding disseminated knowledge in publications that also advertised the genteel status of their consumers and patrons.
An illustration from Jacques-Louis Florentin Engramelle’s Papillons d’Europe (1779-93) on display shows how lepidoptery was fashionable: a young lepidopterist stands in open heathland dressed for the rue Saint-Honoré, elegantly leaning in to capture a new addition to his collection.
Lepidoptery may no longer be the height of fashion, but the passion for butterflies and moths remains, and its continuation across generations and centuries of collectors has yielded genuine insights for science, according to the museum.
Many specimens in U.S. museums have been given by avid collectors, and the perpetuation of this labor of love provides data about how insect species and populations change across time and space.
“They’re referred to as ‘amateurs,’ but their work is significant,” said Miller. “Their dedication has created a bounty of specimens and data that researchers continue to learn from.”
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is no exception to this history of collectors making a difference for science. The Collectors pays tribute to four recent donors of specimens, showcasing the gifts and stories of keen lepidopterists Ken Denton, Tom Dimock, and Paul and Sandy Russell.
Their distinct contributions have significantly expanded the SBMN Entomology Collection, enhancing the Museum’s ability to serve as a resource for researchers.
The Collectors is included with admission to SBMNH. The museum is open daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For more, visit sbnature.org/maximus.