Surname 1

Student Name

Institution

Course

Date

Museum Reflection

The Museum of American Museum of Natural History is the recipient of more than 130

million artifacts, works, and specimens which range from the common to the rare to the never-

before-seen. They offer society a window into how humans live and interact with their

environment (Levey, 1951). This includes artifacts such as Egyptian mummies, woolly

mammoth skeletons, and ancient coins, all stored in climate-controlled conditions to maintain

their integrity. The museum has a variety of exhibits, from old to new, and even includes a

petting zoo. The museum's collections include over 16 million specimens, such as meteorites,

fossils, gems, and minerals. In order to understand how this museum works, one must start with

the history of its founder, John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller began donating his resources to help

people in need through the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920s, which included the

establishment of many museums around the world that continue to grow today. I visited the

museum early this year to look at the "The Age of Discovery" exhibition.

Titled "The Age of Discovery," the exhibition project traces the West's effort to find new

lands and peoples to exploit their natural resources. The exhibition highlights the achievements

and consequences of exploration, including the accidental or purposeful introduction of foreign

species and diseases that decimated native populations and spread agriculture around the globe.

It also highlights how humans came to know the world through their interactions with animals,
 Surname 2

plants, weather, and geography. All this information in the exhibition relates very well with the

course I have been reading about museums.

This exhibition displays many objects that explain in detail how each expedition worked.

I understood that it extensively details how humans interacted with the environment, especially

when crossing new lands and oceans. The exhibition features objects and puppets from the

various native cultures they encountered while they explored. The museum details Spanish,

Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, and many other countries rich history of exploration. They

have a collage of ancient maps that showcase the different routes taken by people in their

attempts to explore and create new land. A room of objects and artifacts gathered during

expeditions is placed on small display tables.

The exhibit demonstrates how humanity has used ingenuity and innovation to understand

its world better. Prominent people such as Christopher Columbus, Marie de Medici, Ferdinand

Magellan, and Sir Francis Drake have all left behind records following their explorations. These

first accounts of the Americas, Africa, and Australia contributed to a collective worldview. This

exhibition explains how scientific beliefs and techniques that Europeans discovered were

immediately adopted by the indigenous people they came across. This display is on a stage with

a large map of the world, allowing you to see all the different regions explored by explorers such

as Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan. The objects I saw at the

exhibitions were expeditions, including maps, navigational tools, garments worn aboard ships,

and more.

The Hall of Arctic Animals has a wide variety of taxidermy mounts and dioramas, each

one telling its own story. Visitors can get up close and personal with both extinct and living

animals. The exhibit even includes a polar bear replica with the story of the modern Inuit people.
 Surname 3

One can also study zoogeographic regions, the origins of human beings, human evolution, and

our prehistoric past. They have displays that depict encounters between humans and wild

animals. There are several dioramas containing all of the different types of land animals. They

have a diverse selection of taxidermy mounts and dioramas that provide a detailed look at

dinosaurs and other animals during the Ice Age. There are also human representations to

showcase how these animals impacted humans in the past. The Egyptian Room has an

extraordinary collection of artifacts from ancient Egypt and more modern Egypt, from Pharaohs

to pharaohs to royals.

The exhibition begins with a display of 13 objects used as currency throughout history.

Visitors are introduced to the earliest coins, made from electrum, an alloy of silver and gold.

Then they can walk through three dioramas that depict humans interacting with nature. These

scenes display how humans once preyed upon animals and shared their comforts. The first

diorama shows how humans used their surroundings to make a living by hunting, fishing, and

gathering. The next diorama shows how humans learned to domesticate animals for food,

clothing, and labor. There is even a display case with tools for curing animal hides that were

used long ago. Another diorama shows how the cultivation of plants expanded human

settlements and places where people could settle permanently. There are also artifacts, such as a

bone snout, knife blade, and bone tools found in Africa, that have been used as weapons of mass

killing. The objects in this exhibit give us an incredible look at mankind before technology took

over.

I found the exhibit fascinating and informative, with a vast array of information. The

museum has an incredible collection of animal specimens, some of which can be seen in the

dioramas. The Osiris Room provides a glimpse into the history and the types of things that man
 Surname 4

once thought were real. This includes scaled models of mastodons and horses, from large to

small. One can also study fossils in this room, including stegosaur prints, dinosaur tracks, and

mummies. The exhibition is currently open to the public. I recommend it to everyone who would

like to glimpse the history of exploration. The displayed items and artifacts will keep you

entertained and educated simultaneously.

 Surname 5

Works Cited

Attenborough, David, Martin Clayton, and Rea Alexandratos. Amazing rare things: the art of

natural history in the age of discovery. Kales Press, 2009. 

Levey, Martin. "The First American Museum of Natural History." Isis 42.1 (1951): 10–12. 

Mancall, Peter C. "The age of discovery." Reviews in American History 26.1 (1998): 26-53.

https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?

sa=L&ai=DChcSEwjrleXc29D7AhWQGQYAHduTAPUYABACGgJ3cw&ohost=www.

google.com&cid=CAESa-

D2AboiPKOnym2172KpaT8PETy1s53TWdpOHrvf2g2Yz8tcWRYmnsB7SZ5Fkh0XwR

KfcXG9QobrECkqUBYVMTbNVy7QDQ0fytDnmQubUIoGxkg1OM-

faEvWcVcT1ve8O-oFX7VtPcQ2j8yV&sig=AOD64_0tJcH_nUbmP-PyS4hZkPZJP-

WIfg&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjSndzc29D7AhVuQaQEHQ7RBPsQ0Qx6BAgJEAE