06 December 2018

6. American Museum of Natural History

Location: New York City, New York
Website: https://www.amnh.org/
The Collections: The American Museum of Natural History is the first museum in which I did collections work (in high school, due to the efforts of a truly outstanding biology teacher) and I've spend many hours in it since. I'm especially familiar with the floor housing carnivores and rodents. And yes, I did mean floor: the ten-story building in which the AMNH houses its mammal fossils is bigger than the entirety of most museums.
The Exhibits: Pass beneath the towering Barosaurus or the Haida canoe in the AMNH's entrance halls and you've truly entered an enchanted world. The big draws are the incomparable vertebrate fossil halls on the top floor and the many halls of wildlife dioramas that act as windows on the world for nature-starved New Yorkers, but one could spend days exploring the wonders on display throughout the museum (which, of course, make up only a tiny fraction of its collections). I am especially fond of the many anthropology halls that tend to get overlooked by locals and tourists alike and make for an excellent day of museum-going.
Gift Ideas: The museum has several excellent in-house authors and a press that has released some really stunning collections of scientific illustration. Its library is also one of the best resources natural history resources out there, with all its its scholarly publications freely available.

No comments: