Last year right around this time, we took a long weekend trip to New York City and visited the American Museum of Natural History. Bridget and I had visited the museum a couple of times before on trips without Charlotte, but this was Charlotte’s first visit. It was a little touch-and-go for the kid, because she was terrified of the several huge elephants that grace the African hall, but she eventually relaxed and enjoyed herself (though we did have to forego the dinosaur skeletons completely). Charlotte knew about the AMNH from having seen Ben Stiller’s “Night At The Museum” several times, and was not entirely convinced that all the exhibits didn’t really come to life at night. In the picture above, she and I are posing with the Easter Island-style stone head that appears in the movie — it’s not real, it’s just a recreation of the movie prop, but it was such a popular element of the film that the museum obviously felt they had to have one in order not to disappoint all the little kids who would expect to see it.
As part of their commemoration of Charles Darwin’s bicentennial last week, Seed Magazine ran this cool article about what it’s really like behind the scenes at the AMNH. While most museums do try to put their best articles on display for the public, these institutions that have been around since the beginning of collecting have far more than they can ever display. Yet they still have to catalog, curate, and care for every single thing they possess. It’s hard to even imagine what museums like the Victoria & Albert in London, or the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo must have stowed away.
