Update: The Insectarium is being redesigned, and is scheduled to reopen in 2021.
The Insectarium was our second stop in Montréal’s natural museum complex, Espace Pour La Vie (“Space for Life”). It’s a fascinating and excellently-designed museum. Its exterior looks like a home for insects, almost like a bee hive:
The permanent exhibition is called We Are the Insects and it is predominately ... very green. Graphics are a mix of strikingly clean layouts and comic book-inspired illustrations.
Here’s the view down to the bulk of the exhibition:
Each of the glowing cubes is a display case. Specimens are pinned to a rear-lit graphic, around text and images arranged in a clean, gridular design. Each layout looked nicer than the last, so I'm going to share photos of many.
Some layouts have a sense of irreverence, like this one, with its marching ants:
The different accent colors and stylized illustrations indicated the habitats (e.g. tropical forests) for the specimens.
Throughout the exhibition there were terrariums with some live critters, and beneath some display cubes there were dioramas (faux terrariums, if you will).
There were wall displays, and plenty of interesting charts and diagrams. There were sections about insect lifestyles, diets, reproduction, and what people can do to protect endangered insects. The sheer number of displays could have made for a repetitive slog, but it did not feel that way at all — specimens were fascinating, text was succinct, and the layouts were visually varied while staying true to the design system.
Outside were additional exhibitions and a temporary interactive art installation. And then we were off to explore the Botanical Garden.
Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 15 March 2017.