I am always intrigued by a collections Teddy Roosevelt's Hats
and by an armrest dedicated to one of my favored authors.
But one of my favorite things about the museum is a thing you will not see. You will not see bottled water in their cafe. They don't sell it. They give away tap water. They don't just talk about saving the Earth, they lose revenue to do it.
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Wow, you are a real man about town this weekend! 2 kids to the Bronx Zoo on Sunday and then 4 to the history museum? Wow! isn't 4 a lot for just you?
ReplyDeleteyea, I don't even know what I did on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteI love finding blogs from fellow New Yorkers, and I'm a huge fan of the AMNH! Glad you had a good time!
ReplyDeleteDo they feature a lot of Roosevelt's hats? That would be cool to see.
ReplyDeleteI want to enlighten you about the "skeletons" in Human Origins in AMNH. None of them are actual bones but great copies, and in fact the originals are really bones and not fossilized. They are just not old enough to have been "turned to stone".
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the originals are owned by the country in which they were found. This seems to be an international agreement. Once the anthropologists/archaeologists who have found them have completed their studies they are returned to the country of origin. Sometimes they are loaned out however for exhibits but always returned.
And secondly, it is politically incorrect to exhibit skeletons now regardless of whether they are from ritual burials or found items.
Actually, AMNH does have some "mummies" on exhibit. In particular in the Hall of South American peoples there is "Copper Man", a miner who perished in a copper mine and his body contains copper salts. You can read an interesting account of the museum's acquiring this in the book "Dinosaurs in the Attic". But that was over 100 years ago.
Thanks Anonymous, I am disappointed. I assumed that I was looking at "the real thing". I hope the dinosaurs are real?
ReplyDeleteWhat a coincidence. My friend and I were just talking about the earthquake monitor they have in that museum.
ReplyDeleteWe share one favorite author. And I like your statement about the tap water and losing revenue to save the earth. The museum should be commended by the city.