A Quirk of Nature

Since it opened in Lincoln Park eight years ago, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum has struggled to raise money, draw crowds, and make itself known as more than the site of a stunning butterfly haven. Will it find its own way--or merge with the nearby zoo?

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Without a home, the Chicago Academy of Sciences languished for several years, operating out of small rented spaces. When the new Field Museum-with one of the largest natural history collections in the world-opened in 1893, the academy fell into a "little brother" role. In 1894, the academy built the Matthew Laflin Memorial Building, named for a donor, at 2001 North Clark Street, where Armitage Avenue runs west from the park. The Chicago Park District donated land and $25,000; this relationship formed the model for the city's Museums in the Park arrangement, in which, through a sales tax, Chicagoans contribute to the maintenance of the museums in the city's parks.

For decades, the academy flourished as a research institute, but as a museum it floundered, offering little to the public besides some wildlife and environmental dioramas. By the mid-eighties, the infrastructure of the Laflin Building was outdated; the choice was to expand or close. Walter Netsch, an architect and a commissioner and board president of the Chicago Park District, suggested giving the Laflin Building to the Lincoln Park Zoo and offered the academy 6.35 acres along North Pond, the site of a turn-of-the-century park district maintenance building. The result would reduce the amount of paved area in Lincoln Park, returning land to green space.

"In the old days, the academy was just a mini-destination," says Albert Pick III, a long-standing board member. "But then in the 1990s, this idea of building a new museum started to get a life of its own. By the mid-nineties, it caught a little traction."

Still, the capital campaign was an uphill effort, in large part because the planning was haphazard. "They didn't do a lot of work about how a new museum relates to its neighbor, the zoo, and nearby residents," says one insider. "Does the city need this? Is there support for it? No nonprofit can assume that people just understand them and what they have to offer."

"When the Notebaerts gave the money to name the museum, that helped tremendously," says Judy Istock. While the Chicago Tribune reported the museum took on $31 million in debt to complete the building, von Klan says the museum raised nearly half the funds to pay for the project. (Thanks in part to a recent gift of $1 million from the Notebaerts, the debt is now down to $6.7 million.) Shortly after the Notebaerts' original gift of $4 million, Istock's husband gave the museum $1.6 million to endow the butterfly haven. When the museum opened in 1999, the first butterfly to take flight was a dark-green spicebush swallowtail, a native of the Indiana Dunes.

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From the opening days, the Notebaert lacked emotional support from its neighbors and the city. At the dedication of the new building, witnesses say, Mayor Richard Daley got out of his car, took one look at the starkly modern building in the middle of Lincoln Park, and uttered the f-word. Neighbors complained about the unkempt look of the prairie plantings, and Daley, who thought the idea of planting a prairie in well-manicured Lincoln Park was absurd, lobbied hard through his landscape advisory committee to have the planting contained in some way. Today, it is ringed by crabapple trees, which give a neater look to the park's landscape.

Then there was the problem of exhibits. In the beginning, the butterfly haven was the only exhibit to see at the museum. "It took a while for us to develop things," Charles Douglas, the board chairman, admits, "but I think we have some great exhibits now." The permanent exhibits include the Mysteries of the Marsh, with the rattlesnake and insects living in scaled-down environments. Through hands-on exhibits of water, rocks, and barriers, the RiverWorks explains how the Metropolitan Sanitary District's Deep Tunnel system works with the Chicago River to manage rainwater.

Overall, von Klan sees a shift from mega-crowd shows to intimate experiences. "We're not trying to be an amusement park where kids run through and push buttons," she says. Robots + Us, a show sponsored by the Illinois Tool Works, continues until fall, showing how designers of computers and robots look to nature for inspiration. And this October, a reptile show will open, complete with vipers, alligators, pythons, and snapping turtles.

"Can the Notebaert distinguish itself from the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry?" asks the museum consultant Greg Simoncini. "That is the question they have to answer with the public."

Having just completed a three-year strategic plan, von Klan says, she is looking forward to the challenge. Part of her focus is on achieving modest admission gains of about 10 percent annually; she believes-as do others in the museum world-that the days of blockbuster shows are over. She also wants to increase the programs for adults at the museum, with speakers and workshops concentrating on environmental and green issues. And there is the continuing mainstay of the museum-working with children and teachers to increase their knowledge of science and nature.

What about suggestions of a possible merger with the museum's neighbor, the Lincoln Park Zoo?

"We're interested in collaborating with the zoo," von Klan says. "And we're talking  about doing so with the upcoming reptile show."

Kevin Bell, the director of the zoo, is more direct. "Laurene and I are in a series of ongoing talks about how we can best work together," he says. "But there's no talk of the zoo taking over the Nature Museum."

Not from Bell, but those in the know say the mayor is all for the idea. "It's a matter of how these resources in Lincoln Park can best serve the public," says one person who has heard Daley's concerns. "The mayor thinks the two belong together, and so the Nature Museum is going to have to prove him wrong."

"Mayor Daley has no issues with the Notebeart Museum," says Lance Lewis, city hall's assistant press secretary.

Von Klan feels that the Nature Museum has its own story to tell. "The world is increasingly complex, and people are removed from nature in their lives," she says. "Nature is closer than people think-we just have to get them to understand that." 

Illustration by Daniel Chang; Photography: (Image 1) Courtesy of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Muesum; (Image 2) Dan Rest/Courtesy of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Muesum; (All other images) Courtesy of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Muesum.

This article appears in the July 2007 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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