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Home » At New York’s Natural History Museum

At New York’s Natural History Museum

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m on my way home today, but yesterday I went to the Natural History Museum, an experience I recall from childhood with affection. It’s so huge that it would take many days to really cover it, and I was only there for about four hours, but I did see some old favorites.

First, though, I had to wait in line outside in the pouring rain. I’m not sure why there were so many people there, but there certainly were. But the wait was worth it.

Of course the dinosaurs were a beloved favorite. But I decided that it was the dioramas that still enchanted me. I usually don’t like stuffed animals, but these are so well done – with vegetation in the foreground and beautifully painted backgrounds, and the animals posed so realistically – that I still was transfixed by them.

Here was my favorite – or certainly one of my favorites. My photo doesn’t even begin to do it justice: the impressive size of it, the 3-D nature of it, and the delicate little flowers in front. But here it is anyway:

Comments

At New York’s Natural History Museum — 20 Comments

  3. I used to love going there too, starting with field trips as a child, and great memories of the planetarium. I also lived very close by for a while. But I think it would make me sick to visit after the removal of the majesticTheodore Roosevelt statue. I am still angry over all the vandalism of the Great Awokening and the cowardice of our administrative classes.

  5. The Natural History Museum and the Bronx Zoo were the highlights of my elementary age visits to NYC. Those visits were, of course, before my 8th grade overnight class trip to NYC.

  6. NancyB:

    Yes, the statue removal was repugnant. But funny thing, his name is all over the inside of the building.

    I seem to recall the statue removal had something to do with the depiction of the Native American (erstwhile Indian).

  7. The Denver Museum of Natural History also had many of those diorama also. I, too, as a kid thought they were great. Then the museum went woke. Not sure how many are left. Not many the last time I was there about 20 years ago. Maybe Shirehome can comment.

  9. Last time I visited it felt less intimate than I remembered. I don’t know exactly why, but it wasn’t as enjoyable as I wished it to be. Maybe it has been made too clean and shiny 🙂

  10. Thanks for sharing, it’d be a good place to take my grandsons who live close enough

  11. Chuck:

    Perhaps it was because it was very crowded? When I was a kid it always seemed to be nearly empty when I went. It was packed this time. But not the dioramas.

  12. Physicsguy, I have never been to the Denver Nat Hist Musem. My Wife probably has been, since she lived not far from there and went to East High.

  13. Very nice post, Neo. As a child I enjoyed the dioramas at the Field Museum in Chicago. Also the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and the creepy mummies.

  14. @ physicsguy and Shirehome – We first started going to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science when we moved here 20 years ago. The dioramas were outstanding indeed, for the same reasons as Neo gives, and there were a lot of them. I don’t know how many there were when physicsguy saw them, which may have been before we came, but they filled up most of one side of the second floor when we saw them.

    The museum became our grandchildren’s favorite outing when they moved here about 10 years ago, and since we had a membership, they could go nearly every month. I didn’t see any changes over those years, in either quantity or quality.

    However, the administration did go overboard with wokery a few years ago and changed the Native America exhibits, and the kids weren’t as interested as they got older, so I let our membership lapse.

    I hope they left the dioramas alone, but I’m afraid to go and see.

  15. I remember the Blue Whale gallery, which has been refurbished since my childhood visits.

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a another favorite stop when visiting NYC – and also impossibly vast.

  16. “I don’t know how many there were when physicsguy saw them, which may have been before we came, but they filled up most of one side of the second floor when we saw them.”

    That’s what I mean…”one side of the second floor”. Previously, they were all of the 2nd floor, and 3rd, and I believe the 4th. Though I also remember a large section of one of the floors was geology. The elimination did start with the Native American dioramas which I never understood. The dioramas, in my view, were never offensive and showed the daily life of these people. But what do I know? Then more and more were eliminated.

  17. I used to know someone, a scientific illustrator and fine artist, who worked at the Natural History Museum building those dioramas. She’d spend weeks making, say, the leaves for a bush that existed thousands of years ago, or building a dinosaur. I was so jealous of that job!!

  18. I used to go the MNH as well as the Planetarium when I was in elementary school.

  19. Lived within a little over an Hour’s drive of NYC. Field Trips to The Natural History Museum were a favorite. I always liked the Hayden Planetarium. The Metropolitan was also awsome so much amazing stuff (including arms and armor).

    Hey if you want dinosaurs and fossils the Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT ain’t half bad either. As for Dioramas that seems to have been the style, Boston Museum of Science has ones similar to Natural History, but they’re kind of frowsy. In particular the last New England Mountain Lion is pretty sad indeed.

  20. T-Rex vs. triceratops. I still have that image in my brain. I was probably 4-5 at the time.

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