Restoring Access to the Biocultural Collection at the Missouri Botanical Garden

FAIN: ZPA-283531-22

Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO 63110-3420)
Robbie Hart (Project Director: May 2021 to November 2024)

The retention of two staff members, the hiring of a research specialist, and funding of interns engaged in cataloging, digital management, and public programs, along with equipment purchases, to increase access to historical biocultural collections at one of the largest botanical gardens in North America.

The biocultural collection at the Missouri Botanical Garden includes plant-based arts, crafts, tools, foods, medicines, and other material culture artifacts. The disruptions caused by COVID-19 have underscored the urgency of protecting this collection, and shown the potential for increasing access through online cataloging and events. Requested funds would bridge current financial unpredictability to ensure this collection is curated and catalogued, shared through online event programming via the Garden's Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, and made widely accessible through the expansion of the Garden's publicly available Tropicos biodiversity database to include artifacts. Outcomes will be: restored and enhanced preservation of and access to ~12,000 cultural artifacts, the creation and retention of specialized positions, the resumption of public programming, and the creation of a novel functionality to integrate a plant-based cultural collection within a botanical database.