The new Milwaukee Public Museum will have live butterflies and a rainforest exhibit gallery
One of the exhibit galleries in the new Milwaukee Public Museum will be dedicated to a rainforest exhibit, paying homage to one of the current museum's most popular exhibits.
And, just like in the current museum, there will be a live butterfly garden.
That was part of the Milwaukee Public Museum's final announcement of planned exhibit galleries that will be in the new museum. The museum is scheduled to break ground later this year and open to the public in 2026.
The Rainforest
The current rainforest exhibit is the centerpiece of the museum's biology education because the tropics are among the most biodiverse places on the planet. And that's a key reason the new museum's rainforest, sponsored by the We Energies Foundation, will be its own gallery.
The tropical rainforest reproduction will be a dimly lit area, filled with large tree trunks and thick vegetation, with audio effects of rainfall and the sounds of insects, birds and other rainforest animals.
Exhibits in the gallery will center around cultural practices — such as healing ceremonies and traditions surrounding jewelry and clothing — as well as science — such as displays about medicinal plants, venomous specimens and the abundant raw materials in tropical rainforests.
Some exhibit elements and artifacts will be coming over from the current museum, including a hollowed-out tree, a taxidermy howler monkey, sloth and anaconda, as well as oropendola (a type of bird) nests.
Bird specimens mounted above visitors' heads will connect the Wisconsin Journey gallery to the rainforest gallery; according to a statement from the museum, the purpose will be to evoke "the annual mass migration toward the tropics that millions of species make each year to escape cooling northern climates."
There also will be living specimens in some of the rainforest's exhibits, including poison dart frogs and tarantulas.
The butterfly vivarium
The new museum's Puelicher Butterfly Vivarium will be located in the rainforest gallery, and, just like the exhibit in the current museum, visitors will be able to walk among living butterflies and moths as they flutter around the space.
There also will be a live insect lab and a pupae room so visitors can observe the lifecycle of the animals in the vivarium.
Rooftop terrace
The museum's biology education will continue on the Bucyrus Rooftop terrace, where gardens will be filled with native Wisconsin plants that will shift with the seasons.
The terrace will have a walking path, seating and an outdoor classroom, as well as space for special events.
What other exhibit galleries will be in the new museum?
Ground will be broken for the new museum later this year, and the rainforest will be one of the museum's five permanent galleries. The others are:
Time Travel, a gallery focused on the planet's deep past, including when dinosaurs roamed the Earth;
Wisconsin Journey, a gallery of exhibits focused on geological and cultural history in different regions of the state;
Milwaukee Revealed, an immersive gallery considered to be the spiritual successor to the current museum's Streets of Old Milwaukee;
Living in a Dynamic World, a gallery focused on areas and cultures across the world.
In addition to the five permanent galleries and rooftop terrace, there will be a planetarium, as well as space for traveling exhibits and for rotating MPM collections that are usually not on display.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Butterflies, rainforest gallery will be at new Milwaukee Public Museum
