The Future of Texas Ecology – Phase II
The next phase of the Reigniting Curiosity renovation will expand how visitors explore the dynamic relationships that shape the natural world. Naturally Texas: What Makes a Land Home will transform the Mayborn Museum’s ecology gallery into an immersive exploration of the natural systems that shape our region. Visitors will step into richly detailed environments—from neighborhood landscapes alive with hidden connections to the darkened depths of caves where bats emerge at dusk.
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Your support will bring this vision to life—expanding access to the museum’s collections, advancing scientific discovery, and inspiring future generations to care for the place we all call home.
Naturally Texas: What Makes a Land Home
The exhibition is organized into a series of immersive “clusters,” each centered on a key ecological relationship or function. Within each space, a signature experience anchors the story—surrounded by interactive elements, specimens, and layered interpretation that deepen understanding. As visitors move through the gallery, recurring themes such as biodiversity, stewardship, and the role humans play in shaping the environment connect these clusters into a cohesive journey. Along the way, moments of surprise and discovery invite visitors to reconsider what they think they know about the natural world right here in Central Texas.
The Strecker Collection
At the heart of the exhibition is the Mayborn’s extraordinary Strecker Collection. Spanning more than a century of scientific collecting, these specimens document the biodiversity of Texas across time. They are not only beautiful—they are data. By studying them, scientists can track environmental change, understand species variation, and uncover insights that help guide conservation and research today.
“Whenever I go on a collecting jaunt, I always make it a point, not matter how roughly attired I may be, to wear a collar and a necktie. With this mild form of camouflage I sometimes manage to get by on occasions when the lack of it might severely handicap me (in gaining access to private property).”
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Every corner of this exhibition is filled with discovery—ecological relationships, hidden systems that sustain life, and the remarkable organisms that call Central Texas home. Yet one idea rises above all others: we are not separate from the natural world—we are part of it.
We breathe the air shaped by prairie grasses. We rely on water filtered through living systems. The soil sustains us, just as we influence its future. Every step we take is part of a continuum of life that stretches across generations—past, present, and future.
This exhibition invites visitors to see the natural world not as something distant, but as something deeply personal. The landscapes of Central Texas—the plains, rivers, and forests—are not just places we visit. They are systems we belong to, and communities we share with countless other forms of life.
With that connection comes responsibility. To care for this place is to care for ourselves, for future generations, and for the intricate web of life that makes this region so extraordinary.