As a summer intern at NYC’s American Museum of Natural History, senior Joyce Lin focused on fabricating models of Cuba’s swamps and coral reefs | photo courtesy AMNH/R. Mickens
As visitors to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in NYC beat the city heat and explored four floors of exhibits illuminating everything from dinosaurs to outer space, a team of curators, artists and research associates was busily at work up on the fifth floor. The space was closed off as the team painstakingly worked on ¡Cuba!, an exhibit that will open in November and explore in depth the island’s biodiversity, culture and history. Among the skilled fabricators and model makers working to ensure that the exhibit meets the AMNH’s high standards was rising senior Joyce Lin BRDD 17 FD, who landed a summer internship at the museum funded through a Textron Charitable Trust Fellowship.
“There are a lot of Cuban animals I was completely unfamiliar with,” says Lin – unique species “like the solenodon, a small but venomous rodent that’s found nowhere else on the planet.” In fact, 32% of Cuba’s vertebrates and 50% of its plants are endemic to the island. Other species the exhibit will highlight include the endangered Cuban crocodile and the long extinct giant sloth.