Jamaica 61 Exhibition and Reception at King’s House

An exhibition and reception in celebration of Jamaica’s 61st anniversary of Independence, under the theme ‘Jamaica 61… Proud and Strong’, will be held at King’s House on Thursday, July 27.

The exhibition will be held in the Ballroom, while the reception will take place on the King’s House lawns.

Titled ‘Journey Through Our Natural Heritage’, the exbibit is being mounted by the Natural History Museum of Jamaica, a Division of the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), in collaboration with the Forestry Department’s Public Gardens Division and the Mines and Geology Division in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining.

Director of the Natural History Museum, Tracy Commock, told JIS News that the exhibition is an opportunity to showcase some of Jamaica’s treasures housed at the facility.

“We have a natural history collection with specimen from the early1900s, and the collection, basically, is not seen by a lot of persons. Part of our mandate is to preserve this collection but also to put them on show, when possible,” she said.

Ms, Cammock informed that the exhibit will highlight species from various plants and animal groups that are housed in the botanical and zoological collections.

These include endemic animals such as the Jamaican coney, the crocodile, bats, birds, parrots, insects, beetles and lizards.

There will be displays of Jamaica’s rocks and minerals as well as medicinal plants and their traditional uses, and gifts that Jamaica received during the Independence celebrations in 1962.

“For example, there is the Kiwi bird that we got from New Zealand and the beetles that we got from Africa,” Ms. Cammock noted.

Publications and artwork from the IOJ’s science library will also be on show.

The Natural History Museum of Jamaica’s mandate is to research, classify, identify, document exhibit and share information on Jamaica’s natural history.

For more information, the public can follow the Natural History museum via social media at #ilovenhmj.