Restoration of the Berlin Negatives

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This award provides support for production of archival quality copies of the negatives of a portion of the Field Museum of Natural History's Botanical Type Photograph Collection. The photographic negatives record the "type specimen" -- the individual plant representing a genus or species that most closely exemplifies the essential characteristics that taxon. Many of these negatives are in advanced stages of deterioration, and they need to be copied to state-of-the-art safety film. Among them are the threatened negatives of the type plant specimens once held in the Berlin-Dahlem Museum, which was mostly destroyed in the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II. The negative collection was originated in 1929 by American scientist J. Francis Macbride, who traveled to Europe to photograph type specimens of tropical American plants preserved in major European herbaria. His goal was to make this information available to American botanists unable to travel. In many cases, the Berlin negatives are the only visual remains of the type specimens that were destroyed. These visual records are often essential in characterizing the described taxon; they provide information critical to the proper recognition, typification, and understanding of species in many families. For some species, the only known specimen is recorded among Field Museum's type photographs. The proposed restoration effort will allow future generations of botanists to verify the identities of hundreds of tropical plants, and to study species that have become extinct.