Recent renewed enthusiasm and gushing praise for the American Museum of Natural History.
The Museum is a truly spectacular institution. I have a lifelong admiration for the place. Growing up two hours outside of New York, my parents would bring my brother and I for fun family visits, and the Museum was a hotspot. I had two- and only two- destinations in the Museum- North American Mammals, and the Whale Room (my brother preferred the dinosaurs, the planetarium, and, fortunately, the Whale, so we were able to relieve our parents from our whining and arguing about where to go next while learning about marine biology).
I was categorically obsessed with animals as a child. Disney movies were only worth watching if animals were the stars of the cast. Bambi and the Fox and the Hound were top of the heap, whereas Cinderella was only interesting in the bits where the mice were scampering about and the pretty horses were pulling the carriage. (Snow White was in a class of her own- I desperately wanted to be her, living in her little cottage with bluebirds perched on my shoulders and bunnies eating out of my hand).
So a trip to the Museum meant racing to the Hall of North American Mammals as soon as my dad shelled out admission. I was particularly geeky about Northeastern animals, including white-tailed deer, raccoons, bears- anything I might stumble across in my Appalachian expeditions (which I have yet to take). Once, on what was likely our first visit ever, my brother and I were racing each other through the hall, a tough ordeal as I wanted to stop and ogle the dioramas as much as I wanted to catch up to him. I ran right up to the diorama of the two wolves running in the snowy night, poised as to jump right through the glass, and in shock let out a blood-curdling scream. My parents, and probably a security guard or two, found me slightly hysterical and weepy.
Fond childhood memories of terror aside, the Museum as I am coming to know it now is a far more complex and astounding place than I could have guessed. Founded in 1869, the Museum has undergone different building plans and structural changes that has resulted in effectively 25 buildings being stitched together in a labyrinthine maze that is just as confusing as you think it is when you can’t understand that damn floorplan. If you are fortunate enough to get behind the scenes, you learn of staff-only elevators, stairwells, and secret floors that only exist in certain parts of the Museum, like a mezzanine or a 6th floor here and there.
The Museum has two basic important functions- public education, via exhibits and educational programs on site and disseminated throughout other museums, schools, and the wonderful internet; and scientific research. A humming nucleus of genius, the curators, collectors, researchers, and students who roam all of those greyed out areas on the aforementioned floorplan engage in international expeditions and collaborative projects as well as combing through the 32 million natural specimens and cultural artifacts that comprise the collection. Apparently everything is stored on-site, which is a little shocking given that number.
There are current projects to digitize the Museum’s holdings across the different departments, which are Anthropology, Invertebrate Zoology, Vertebrate Zoology, Paleontology, and the Physical Sciences. I had to look up what exactly “Physical Sciences” meant. It incorporates Astrophysics and Earth and Planetary Sciences. There is so much cumulative intelligence at the Museum it’s impossible to fathom. Anyway, photographers are going through the specimens and digitally imaging the artifacts for the Museum’s archives as well as for international research. Access permitting, scholars across the world can log in to the Museum’s site and see the holdings. Digitizing also reduces the handling of the physical objects, further extending their longevity.
This is all the tip of the iceberg for me. I am devouring what I am learning about the Museum in general, and following fascinating threads into different stories. A good one discovered this past week is the story of Jack Murphy, aka “Murph the Surf”. One-time surfing champion and convicted murderer of a California secretary, Jack’s third claim to fame was pulling of the biggest jewel heist in American History. The Star of India is a 563 carat sapphire, almost perfect, almost flawless, and unusual in having stars on both sides. It was donated to the Museum by Mr. J.P. Morgan himself back in the day. In 1964 Jack Murphy learned that the Museum security was lax, that the window in the Gem hall was always left open a crack, and that the security system was non-functional. Also, the alarm wires within the Star of India’s case were obviously disconnected. So Jack crawled in the window one night and stole the gem and a few others, including the Eagle Diamond and the deLong Ruby. Most of the gems were later discovered in a footlocker in a bus station, excluding the Eagle Diamond, which has never been found. You can see both the Star and the Ruby back in their (surely very secure) cases in the Hall of Gems now. Jack served some prison time but remarkably has been out for years now, and has fashioned himself into an Evangelist who preaches to the imprisoned.
Science! History! Photography! Crime! It’s all so fascinating. Go to the Museum.