Martha (passenger pigeon) collection National Museum of Natural History
After death
After her death, Martha was quickly brought to the Cincinnati Ice Company, where she was held by her feet and frozen into a 300-pound (140 kg) block of ice. She was then sent by express train to the Smithsonian, where she arrived on September 4, 1914, and was photographed. She had been molting when she died, and as such she was missing several feathers, including some of her longer tail feathers. William Palmer skinned Martha while Nelson R. Wood mounted her skin. Her internal parts were dissected by Robert Wilson Shufeldt and are also preserved and kept by the National Museum of Natural History.From the 1920s through the early 1950s she was displayed in the National Museum of Natural History's Bird Hall, placed on a small branch fastened to a block of Styrofoam and paired with a male passenger pigeon that had been shot in Minnesota in 1873. She was then displayed as part of the Birds of the World exhibit that ran from 1956 to 1999. During this time she left the Smithsonian twice—in 1966 to be displayed at the Zoological Society of San Diego's Golden Jubilee Conservation Conference, and in June 1974 to the Cincinnati Zoo for the dedication of the Passenger Pigeon Memorial. When the Smithsonian shut down its Birds of the World exhibit, Martha was removed from display and  kept in a special exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo. Martha was back on display in the Smithsonian from June 2014 to September 2015 for the exhibit Once There Were Billions. Martha has been on public display in the Smithsonian's "Objects of Wonder" exhibit alongside a Mountain Gorilla skull since March 10th, 2017. She will remain on display there until the exhibit's scheduled closure in 2025.
assemblage accumulation gathering compilation assortment