Small Grant Big Improvement Funds Butterfly Conservation Project

By: Barry Chandler
Added: 08 November 2018

Torquay Museum has recieved funding from South West Museum Development Programme to help conserve The Hebbert Collection of Lepidoptera. The Hebbert Collection is Torquay Museum’s largest collection of tropical and European Lepidoptera. Given by E.G. Hebbert in November 1935 this huge collection is housed in 19 oak collectors cabinets consisting of 226 drawers and 10,843 specimens. The collection is the Museum's best display resource for Lepidoptera, having a huge geographical spread coupled with visually spectacular specimens. It is used regularly for events relating to insects and drawers from the collections have been displayed in several recent exhibitions.

Following on from Training provided by the South West Area Natural Sciences Collections Project in 2017. This project will alow the Museum to photograph each drawer before and after restaging and cleaning, creating a complete conservation record of the collection that will be stored on our computer server. We will also check specimens against the inventory of the collection that was created in 2010, noting any loses over that period and updating our documentation.