Jul

Naturalist Center moving back to the Mall

The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Va. closed its doors to the public on July 9. The Center will return to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and will reopen in 2013 as part of a new education center.

The Naturalist Center was relocated to Leesburg in 1995 due to ongoing renovations at the Natural History Museum Building. Operated as a joint program with Loudoun County, the Center has provided both individuals and groups with a variety of natural history learning opportunities.

At the Naturalist Center, visitors can have hands-on experiences with collections, and are able to conduct scientific investigations similar to those done by Smithsonian scientists. Some of the Center’s popular activities include “Draw-ins”—where visitors sketch some of the thousands of specimens in the open collections with assistance from professional llustrators. Students have heard lectures on various subjects from learned speakers and participated in Identi-days, where visitors could bring in their collections of rocks, fossils and more to be identified by museum staff.

“The Naturalist Center is one of the jewels of the science education program at the Smithsonian” said Bill Watson, Chief of Onsite Learning Venues at the Museum .

Richard Efthim, the program director credits the Center’s volunteers: “Over the course of 16 years, the Leesburg site has hosted more than 150,000 visitors—people who have learned about everything from paleobiology to botany and earth sciences. We pay tribute to our wonderful volunteers whose dedication and tireless energy has made the Naturalist Center such a success.”