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more than 6,000 spiders—90 percent of
them local to North Carolina, all of them
hand-caught by him or his students. A
few rows over from the spider cabinets
is a two-headed kitten,
floating in preserva-
tion liquid with its fur
still intact, donated by
a woman in Matthews
when it died shortly aer it was born in
an otherwise normal litter.
Sometimes Levitan’s phone rings with
someone looking to make a donation—
oen aer the death of a relative who was
a collector. She’s seen it all: literal hidden
gems inside an old shed, asbestos, radio-
active materials, hoarding situations, and
hopeful donors who think they have a
fossil but instead are merely the keepers of
a nely made children’s model.
Aer entries are tagged by Levitan or a
volunteer, they’re sorted as either geolog-
ical, biological, or cultural and put into an
appropriately labeled cabinet. C429, for
instance, is reserved for “rabbits, hedge-
hogs, skunks, minks, weasels, and foxes.”
The spiders have C410 all to themselves.
Most of Levitan’s work begins once an
item is collected and catalogued—some-
thing she wishes more people under-
stood. “As soon as we put things on dis-
play, there is a time limit.
Factors like light, temper-
ature, humidity, all have
an eect on the life of an
object,” she says. “I am atwar with live insects at all times ... But we
are holding all of this for research and for
the betterment of society.”
The items are split into two categories,
the teaching collection and the perma-
nent collection. The permanent collec-
tion contains the items preserved with
the utmost care and designated as highly
important to keeping history alive. The
teaching collection is larger and contains
items that can be touched or acciden-
tally damaged. These items can be loaned
to teachers in Charlotte or rotated into
displays in the main museum, functions
critical to Levitan’s and the museum’s goal
to inspire a lifelong love of learning. It’s
a goal that has recently become personal
for Levitan: She’s expecting her rst child,
a boy, in September.
“You see the aha moment when a kid
has a sample in their hands and can touch
history,” she says. “There are kids out there
collecting insects or rocks, and people may
think they’re weird. We don’t.”
TONYA MALINOWSKI is a producer for ESPN by
day, writer and haphazard home cook by night.
You can say hello at @TonyaMalinowski on Twitter.The Discovery Place Science collection
is available for group tours. To
schedule, contact Robyn Levitan at
[email protected].