SPRING 2021

It’s All About Connection.

The Museum of Natural and Cultural History is a place for making connections—to each other, to our past, and to our future. It’s a place for digging into science, celebrating culture, and joining together to create a just and sustainable world.

Connections are also the organizing theme of this 2021 edition of Fieldnotes, our annual online newsletter. The stories here celebrate some of the many connections that make the museum what it is, and more broadly, they honor the central importance of connectedness within and across our diverse Oregon communities.

We hope you enjoy this issue’s stories, and we hope they inspire you to stay connected with us.

FROM THE DIRECTOR

Mammoth sculpture in the museum courtyard

Resilience, Sustainability, and Connection

ANTHROPOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS

Volunteers and staff in collections

Connecting through Collections

ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

A museum archaeologist sifting through sediment at a field site in south-central Oregon

Protecting and Preserving Oregon Heritage

CONDON FOSSIL COLLECTION

MNCH volunteer Barry Hughes pulls open a drawer of fossils in the Condon Collection

Adapting to Change

EXHIBITS + PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Museum staff member Collin packing up kids' science kits to go

Lessons We Learned
from the Pandemic