UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — After being closed to the public for more than six years, Penn State's Frost Entomological Museum has reopened with new and improved exhibits, storage facilities, and research capacity, much to the delight of school groups and insect enthusiasts.
The improvements were needed to ensure the preservation of more than a million specimens of insects and other arthropods — most of which were collected from the eastern United States — and to modernize the facility to fulfill its educational and research missions, said Andy Deans, the museum's director and professor of entomology in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
"The museum stands, in part, as a resource to preserve, study, understand and celebrate the arthropod diversity of Pennsylvania," Deans said. "We also exist to facilitate research and training and, as our mission statement says, 'to foster a sense of curiosity about the natural world and to instill responsibility in all people to make our world a better place.'"
Observing its 50th anniversary this year, the Frost Entomological Museum was founded in 1969 and named in honor of Stuart Frost, who began his career in the Penn State Department of Entomology in 1922, retiring in 1957. Frost was responsible for the first major insect reference collection at the University and continued to add thousands of specimens to the collection well into his retirement. He died in 1980.