Now that we’re done with our traipse into the rich cultural heritage of Europe, let’s head onto somewhere more local to me… New York City!
One of the entrances to the American Museum of Natural History
And more specifically, the American Museum of National History. I first ‘visited’ this museum through the movie, Night at the Museum, as it was the supposed setting of the movie (though the inside shots were actually from a variety of different sets.) And of course, Ross from Friends works at the museum in the earlier seasons. Nevertheless it’s always exciting to visit a place that’s famous.
Interesting gem/mineral from the museum collections
I actually went to the museum in 2014 while in Manhattan, NYC. I had a couple hours of free time away from my group, in which I went to Central Park, which is beautiful. I wanted to visit somewhere else though, and the Natural History Museum was nearby so naturally, there I went!
The exterior architecture is quite impressive, a mix of Gothic, Neo-Romanesque, and Beaux-Arts styles.
The museum was established almost 150 years ago, in 1869. Theodore Roosevelt Senior, father of 26th President Teddy Roosevelt, was one of the many founders of the museum. Today, the museum is now one of the largest in the world: twenty-eight connecting buildings, with forty-five permanent exhibition halls. And that large amount of space can only contain a fraction of the thirty-three million specimens and cultural artifacts the museum collections contain.
Easter Island head that was featured in Night at the Museum
With a huge collection like that, there’s something there for everyone, halls of: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, biodiversity, ocean life, fossils, earth & space, human origins, gems & minerals, meteorites, and more. As all large museums, it’s most efficient to choose specific halls to go to beforehand, to get the most out of the experience.
Two exhibits I spent the most time in were the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, and the Fossil Halls, more specifically the two halls of dinosaurs.
Bones of huge reptiles of which we can only imagine what their skin texture and color looked like are displayed. Your mind is opened up to imagining a time long ago where these creatures went about the world. And of course, there is the well-known Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, which again reminded by of “Rexy” from Night at the Museum.
Then, the hall of marine life, featuring a 94-foot long blue whale model. The blue whale is the largest animal alive today, and it’s really awesome to see how huge it really is It’s suspended from the ceiling, and you can see a new portion of the model wherever you go in the long elliptical room. The variety of marine life is astounding, especially when we have only explored a fraction of our oceans.
The life-size blue whale model
Cute-eyed seals
The American Museum of Natural History is a site unlike our previous travels into history, for what makes this place special is not its place in history, but the long, time period spanning journey in its collections.