Public Museum gets $1 million gift for scientific research

The Milwaukee Public Museum has received a $1 million gift from board member and longtime volunteer Christine Rundblad to promote scientific research at the natural science and human history museum and throughout Wisconsin.

Rundblad's gift will establish a Center for Wisconsin Biodiversity and Environment capable of exploring Wisconsin's changing natural resources and climate while taking a fresh look at the museum's collections of more than 4 million scientific and cultural specimens, officials said Tuesday.

The new biodiversity center will sponsor local BioBlitz 24-hour counts of species diversity in urban parks, build a database of information about hundreds of thousands of biological specimens collected in Wisconsin over the past 170 years and provide fellowships to scientists for original research at the museum, said Ellen Censky, the museum's senior vice president and academic dean....