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A Conversation with Cristian Samper: A Fascination With Forests Finds Fulfillment at Smithsonian

As a boy, Cristian Samper rambled through the tropical forests of his native Colombia, marveling at the diversity that surrounded him. Not content to view the flora and fauna only in the abstract, he began what was to become a lifelong obsession and vocation, cataloging the diversity and assembling it into collections that forcefully argue for its preservation. Continue reading

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Museum of the Medical Macabre Edges Into the Mainstream

Over its 140 years, the National Museum of Health and Medicine has been a destination for amateur Civil War historians, medical researchers and tourists with a penchant for the macabre. The museum, on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, still has plenty to satisfy the prurient, but over the last five years it has put away more of its gruesome artifacts and edged further into the museum mainstream. “We have moved with the times, so we have a more contextual approach,”said Dr. Jim Connor, assistant director for collections. Continue reading

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