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Laura Donnelly-Smith

Laura Donnelly-Smith is a writer and editor in the exhibitions department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. She’s written exhibit content about ancient amphibians, narwhals, America’s wilderness areas, Iceland, botany, and a really, really bad mass extinction 252 million years ago. Her favorite behind-the-scenes exhibition moment was (carefully!) vacuuming the fennec fox on display in the Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals. Before becoming an exhibition writer, Donnelly-Smith spent a decade writing about education for various publications and organizations.

Stories from this author

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will dive deep into the Arctic world of narwhals to explore what makes this mysterious animal and its changing ecosystem unique and important. “Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend” will present Inuit perspectives on their relationship with narwhals and the latest scientific knowledge about these animals, while illuminating the interconnectedness among narwhals, people and their ecosystems (Smithsonian Institution).

Narwhals, Narwhals, Swimming in the...Smithsonian?

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the development process behind the new exhibition, "Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend" on view at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.