inter museum relations

One of the things I like about my job is that I have the opportunity to see a lot of exhibits before they open. Such was the case last Thursday when I went to the Natural History Museum's Dino Dance Party for the new dinosaur pavilion the night before it was revealed to the public. I wasn't much of a dancer, but I had never gone to the museum and since everyone else was shaking their tail feathers, I pretty much had the exhibits to myself. Which is my version of heaven.

I will get to the dino pavillion in a minute, but since I was a newbie I will talk about the other stuff first.




The museum featured a lot of beautiful dioramas featuring once live animals. This was before PETA and in the early 1900's where people would think:

"I would really like that in my museum"

BANG BANG
"Now this animal is in my museum"

(Which I would like to mention is conjecture by me)

To the right are Arabian Oryxes. What is hard to pick up though is how amazing the dioramas are painted and thought out. Standing there in front of these animals you are totally transported to the dunes of the Sahara. The sun, the sun's shadow, the hoof prints in the sand.

There were dioramas of Grizzly Bear, White Tailed Deer, a grand scene of elephants of all sizes w/ water buffalo and for the first time I was able to see how a giraffe drinks water (very awkward by the way), animals upon animals that I had never heard of and then there was a scene of what is in Los Angeles' back yard-which is coyote eating a house cat next to an outdoor pool. Wylie coyote.





To the left are the Walruses resting lazily on an ice float. Which was my favorite. The ice bergs were 3D I swear.

Click here for more information and there is a video on how the Natural History Museum thinks about creating a diorama and the history of dioramas. More are also featured on this site.

We wandered around to the conservation labs where you can watch them clean fossils, when through the bird section and spotted all the birds that we usually see tide pooling or on other Team Girl Trips.

We end up underneath a Fin Whale skeleton which was the whale we stalked in this post

The dinosaur pavilion was amazing as well, sheets of rock with fossils still inside, life sized dinosaurs. Which I assume are at other museums, but I don't ever remember going to those as a kid and Northern Minnesota isn't really known for its museums. I guess that is why I am here, in the land of museums.