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Museum of the Macabre
In addition to overseeing admissions, retail, food & beverage, and human resources during my time at the Delaware Museum of Nature & Science, I also planned and executed a whole host of adult programs. As was the case with pretty much every museum I've worked for, I ended up with more ideas than I was able to execute, and Museum of the Macabre was one of those ideas. All I really had in mind was the name of the event, the idea that we could do a night around Halloween focused on how we learn from death, and that we could have the curator of the museum's collection of bird skins do a demo of how he learns from the skins. This idea didn't end up getting fully fleshed out (pun fully intended) in my time at the museum, but they ended up building a pretty amazing event from that small spark of an idea.
The 2026 event was absolutely fantastic! The museum was packed with visitors in costumes and spooky shirts going from table to table, learning from a variety of community partners. A funeral home was there talking about how they prepare a body next to a display of coffins. Four different University of Delaware clubs were on site talking about their areas of expertise, we caught the Geology Club talked about toxic minerals and the Entomology club letting visitors hold some pretty cool bugs,.The Delaware Solid Waste Authority did a deep dive (just assume every pun is fully intended) into decomposition and landfills. Party Business was doing some horrifically gory stage makeup. Everywhere you looked, there was spooky science, it was fantastic!
With so much to see and do, a few things in particular caught our attention as we wandered through the museum. Being a tattoo fan, I was drawn to Malarkey Tattoo's table and was happy to just listen to them talk about the science of tattooing. What happened instead is that I got to actually tattoo a section of pig skin! It was so cool to be able to use the same tools they do to tattoo and, in the process, learn that I should never be a tattoo artist. On the opposite side of the museum, Rainbow Soap Company had a display which we checked out because we love a good, locally-made soap. What we got was a fascinating talk on how the mob used lye in body disposal - the same lye/water solution that some cartels used to "take care of a problem" is what is used in green cremation!
As cool as all of that was, the highlight of the night was Dr. Matt Halley, DelMNS' Research Director & Curator of the Bird Collection. Matt had a table set up in the Discovery Gallery where he was prepping a barred owl for the collection. While I would've happily watched this the whole evening, we wanted to see everything else so only caught two parts of this process. First, we saw Halley separating the skin from the leg muscle. During this process, he talked about collecting tissue samples to test for heavy metals, as mines in Pennsylvania tend to leak heavy metals into the waterways. Later, I got so see him separate the skull from the skin, during which the crowd around his table got a lesson on bird eyes and some insight into how Halley wants to use lenses from a variety of birds' eyes to conduct a study on focal distance. I hope that Matt does another public demonstration like this one, I'd honestly buy a ticket just for that!
Note: the video below might not be for you if you're squeamish.
DelMNS has some pretty great events throughout the year. The Renascience Faire combines a science fair with a Renaissance Faire, Sound Bath in Nature occurs several times a year and helps you find your zen, there's usually a themed murder mystery around Valentine's Day, and they offer tours of the massive scientific collections a few times throughout the year. Touring the collection is of particular interest at this moment, as Dr. Halley recently described a new species of bird from the collection. For the over 21 crowd, the museum also presents Nerd Nite on the 4th Wednesday of the month from January through November at Wilmington Brew Works. Of course, you can always treat yourself to a membership for free museum admission and event discounts and support a fantastic, affordable science museum here in the Tri-State area!