Exhibits

Current Exhibits

Learn a bit about the fascinating current exhibits in our main exposition hall! You can also visit our Theater page to see our videos.

Only on St. Martin

Meet the unique animals that live on St. Martin and nowhere else in the world! Discover living examples of adaptation and evolution that are found only here.

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Built Here

This exhibit explores the heritage of St. Martin's traditional building techniques, now in danger after Irma. These techniques helped keep homes cool before air conditioning. Beautiful details like hand-carved wooden gingerbread trim and hand-made breeze blocks create a unique look for the island.

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The Invaders

In this exhibit we take a closer look at the animals that arrived on St. Martin with the human help and have transformed both the ecology and history of the island and continue to do so. The invaders have exterminated native species, spread disease and even helped cause the collapse of at least one agricultural industry.

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Gut Life

There may not be any rivers on St. Martin, but guts—seasonal streams in the ravines that run between the island's hills—contain a surprising amount of life. Learn about these amazing freshwater ecosystems at our Gut Life exhibit.

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Team Clean

Learn about the insects that keep our island tidy by consuming carrion and returning those nutrients to the earth.

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Kingdom of the Night

Meet the animals that take over the island when the sun goes down!

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To the Bat Cave!

St. Martin's caves are home to an entire ecosystem of bats, bugs and other cave-dwelling critters. Learn about St. Martin's only native mammals and their neighbors.

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The Tree of Life

The Gaïac, or Lignum Vitae, is an endangered Caribbean native. This tree was heavily harvested—it has the hardest wood in the world—and grows very slowly. This exhibit showcases one of the Caribbean's most beautiful native plants and Les Fruits de Mer's Club Gaïac project of studying, mapping and planting this amazing tree.

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Past Exhibits

Here are a few of the special exhibits we have featured in the past.

Women, People of Color, and the Making of Natural History in the Caribbean

Women and people of color have made important contributions to science through history. However, their work has often been hidden, or simply not as well publicized as those of their white male contemporaries–and this is as true in the Caribbean as elsewhere in the world. Amuseum Naturalis hosted two special exhibits in 2016 and 2017 that are part of a special series created to shine a light on the fascinating stories of these incredible men and women who helped build the scientific heritage of the Caribbean, from the 1600s to the early 1900s.

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The Shell Collector

In 2016 and 2017, Amuseum Naturalis featured an exhibit on Dr. Hendrik van Rijgersma, St. Martin's 19th century naturalist. A doctor by trade and a passionate shell collector, he provided biological specimens to museums in the United States and Europe, greatly increasing our knowledge of the island's flora and fauna at a critical time.

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Shadow of a Drought

The photo essay Shadow of a Drought was a featured exhibit in our special exhibition room in January 2016. It explores the severe drought that impacted much of the Caribbean in 2015, with an emphasis on the changes that took place in St. Martin's wetlands.

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