Whirlwind trip west
That was a lot of work for one museum exhibit, but how often do you get to see body casts from Pompeii?
There were a lot of odd, little every-day items, which is often the mark of a good historical/archaeological/ethnographic exhibit. My favorite was a tiny dog figurine that was very life-like and posed so it was looking up at you pleadingly with these bulbous glass eyes. Dad (who had unexpectedly elected to come along) liked a bronze hand sculpture that had been covered across every inch with all kinds of symbols and charms so that it was kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of talismans. The furniture was gorgeous and the medical tools were fascinating.*
The body casts, while amazing, were understandably kind of a bummer with people who clearly died slowly enough to know Things Were Bad but quickly enough that there was nothing they could do about it by that point. I overheard a number of people remark with surprise that they hadn't known the eruption took many hours and some people were able to get away before things became inescapably fatal.
Anyway, it was a good exhibit and if you live near San Diego or Charlotte definitely consider having a look.
Coming soon: Star Wars, so I'm probably going to have to make another extremely brief trip to MN sometime this summer.
I hadn't been to the Science Museum in ages, and while most of it was familiar, there were a few new things to notice. They had this exhibit near the dinosaurs with a large sphere suspended on barely-visible wires and four projectors that could project seamlessly the surface of the Earth (or Mars, the Moon, etc.) onto the sphere and even animate it to look like it was rotating or to show weather patterns over time. The effect was very Return of the Jedi.
I'm sure I'd been back in the little Ye Olde Timey Museum mini-exhibit-within-an-exhibit where they keep the mummy before, but this was the first time I'd noticed/been bothered to read the displays around it chronicling the history of the mummy's exhibition. Pictures show that once upon a time, it was displayed with a fake sarcophagus in the middle of a room. When I was growing up, it was in this glass pyramid-shaped case, located outside of the traffic flow but still drawing some attention to itself. Now it's as if someone went "Well, crap. This isn't very politically correct, but people will ask if we don't put it out. Here, stick it back in a corner behind multiple visual barriers and hopefully no one will notice."
Interestingly, this exhibit hall had warnings on the doors that the room contains "owl and eagle parts" (in the form of Native American ceremonial regalia). Dad and I puzzled over that one, since there is no warning about the various taxidermied animals, two-headed turtles in jars, bones and shells, and the DEAD MUMMIFIED HUMAN BEING, but we didn't think this was likely a case of cultural objection either, since the cultures we thought most likely to possibly object to these specific items were themselves the producers the garments in question and therefore probably wouldn't object in this circumstance. Dad suggested it was because some people might have a strong objection to animals used for clothing and display - even in an ethnographic context - as opposed to education and soforth. I'm still puzzled.
The room also had the Questionable Medical Devices, which I was glad to finally see a few more of. I got psychograph-ified once years ago at some kind of school dance. It was like getting a scalp massage. Scalp massage machines are definitely the kind of questionable medical devices people should be building.
*They reminded me of the Roman exhibit the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art had a few years ago with the vaginal speculum.Women in the group: "Hey, some things don't change all that much, do they?"
Men in the group: *look slightly ill*
There were a lot of odd, little every-day items, which is often the mark of a good historical/archaeological/ethnographic exhibit. My favorite was a tiny dog figurine that was very life-like and posed so it was looking up at you pleadingly with these bulbous glass eyes. Dad (who had unexpectedly elected to come along) liked a bronze hand sculpture that had been covered across every inch with all kinds of symbols and charms so that it was kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of talismans. The furniture was gorgeous and the medical tools were fascinating.*
The body casts, while amazing, were understandably kind of a bummer with people who clearly died slowly enough to know Things Were Bad but quickly enough that there was nothing they could do about it by that point. I overheard a number of people remark with surprise that they hadn't known the eruption took many hours and some people were able to get away before things became inescapably fatal.
Anyway, it was a good exhibit and if you live near San Diego or Charlotte definitely consider having a look.
Coming soon: Star Wars, so I'm probably going to have to make another extremely brief trip to MN sometime this summer.
I hadn't been to the Science Museum in ages, and while most of it was familiar, there were a few new things to notice. They had this exhibit near the dinosaurs with a large sphere suspended on barely-visible wires and four projectors that could project seamlessly the surface of the Earth (or Mars, the Moon, etc.) onto the sphere and even animate it to look like it was rotating or to show weather patterns over time. The effect was very Return of the Jedi.
I'm sure I'd been back in the little Ye Olde Timey Museum mini-exhibit-within-an-exhibit where they keep the mummy before, but this was the first time I'd noticed/been bothered to read the displays around it chronicling the history of the mummy's exhibition. Pictures show that once upon a time, it was displayed with a fake sarcophagus in the middle of a room. When I was growing up, it was in this glass pyramid-shaped case, located outside of the traffic flow but still drawing some attention to itself. Now it's as if someone went "Well, crap. This isn't very politically correct, but people will ask if we don't put it out. Here, stick it back in a corner behind multiple visual barriers and hopefully no one will notice."
Interestingly, this exhibit hall had warnings on the doors that the room contains "owl and eagle parts" (in the form of Native American ceremonial regalia). Dad and I puzzled over that one, since there is no warning about the various taxidermied animals, two-headed turtles in jars, bones and shells, and the DEAD MUMMIFIED HUMAN BEING, but we didn't think this was likely a case of cultural objection either, since the cultures we thought most likely to possibly object to these specific items were themselves the producers the garments in question and therefore probably wouldn't object in this circumstance. Dad suggested it was because some people might have a strong objection to animals used for clothing and display - even in an ethnographic context - as opposed to education and soforth. I'm still puzzled.
The room also had the Questionable Medical Devices, which I was glad to finally see a few more of. I got psychograph-ified once years ago at some kind of school dance. It was like getting a scalp massage. Scalp massage machines are definitely the kind of questionable medical devices people should be building.
*They reminded me of the Roman exhibit the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art had a few years ago with the vaginal speculum.Women in the group: "Hey, some things don't change all that much, do they?"
Men in the group: *look slightly ill*