American Museum Of Natural History Books

Hall Of North American Forests

The Hall of North American Forests is a one-story hall on the museum’s ground floor in between the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall and the Warburg Hall of New York State Environments. It contains ten dioramas depicting a range of forest types from across North America as well as several displays on forest conservation and tree health. Constructed under the guidance of noted botanist Henry K. Svenson and opened in 1959, each diorama specifically lists both the location and exact time of year depicted. Trees and plants featured in the dioramas are constructed of a combination of art supplies and actual bark and other specimens collected in the field. The entrance to the hall features a cross section from a 1,400-year-old sequoia taken from the King’s River grove on the west flank of the Sierra Mountains in 1891.

Whitney Memorial Hall Of Oceanic Birds

This particular hall has undergone a complicated history over the years since its founding in 1953. Frank Chapman and Leonard C. Sanford, originally museum volunteers, had gone forward with creation of a hall to feature birds of the Pacific islands. In the years up to its founding, the museum had engaged in various expeditions to Fiji, New Zealand, and the Marianas to collect birds for the exhibit. The hall was designed as a completely immersive collection of dioramas, including a circular display featuring birds-of-paradise. In 1998, The Butterfly Conservatory was installed inside the hall originally as a temporary exhibit, but as the popular demand of the exhibit increased, the Hall of Oceanic Birds has more or less remained closed by the museum.

Sanford Hall Of North American Birds

The Sanford Hall of North American birds is a one-story hall on the third floor of the museum, above the Hall of African Peoples and between the Hall of Primates and Akeley Hall’s second level. Its 25 dioramas depict birds from across North America in their native habitats. Opening in 1909, the dioramas in Sanford Hall were the first to be exhibited in the museum and are, at present, the oldest still on display. At the far end of the hall are two large murals by ornithologist and artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes. In addition to the species listed below, the hall also has display cases devoted to large collections of warblers, owls, and raptors.

Conceived by museum ornithologist Frank Chapman, construction began on dioramas for the Hall of North American Birds as early as 1902. The Hall is named for Chapman’s friend and amateur ornithologist Leonard C. Sanford, who partially funded the hall and also donated the entirety of his own bird specimen collection to the museum.

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Arthur Ross Hall Of Meteorites

The Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites contains some of the finest specimens in the world including Ahnighito, a section of the 200-ton Cape York meteorite which was first made known to non-Inuit cultures on their investigation of Meteorite Island, Greenland. Its great weight, 34 tons, makes it the largest displayed in the Northern Hemisphere. It has support by columns that extend through the floor and into the bedrock below the museum.

The hall also contains extra-solar nanodiamonds more than 5 billion years old. These were extracted from a meteorite sample through chemical means, and they are so small that a quadrillion of these fit into a volume smaller than a cubic centimeter.

Hall Of Reptiles And Amphibians

The Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians serves as an introduction to herpetology, with many exhibits detailing reptile evolution, anatomy, diversity, reproduction, and behavior. Notable exhibits include a Komodo dragon group, an American alligator, Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, and poison dart frogs.

In 1926, W. Douglas Burden, F.J. Defosse, and Emmett Reid Dunn collected specimens of the Komodo Dragon for the museum. Burden’s chapter “The Komodo Dragon”, in Look to the Wilderness, describes the expedition, the habitat, and the behavior of the dragon.

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Richard Gilder Graduate School

The AMNH offers a Master of Arts in Teaching in Earth Science and a PhD in Comparative Biology.

On October 23, 2006, the museum launched the Richard Gilder Graduate School, which offers a PhD in Comparative Biology, becoming the first American museum in the United States to award doctoral degrees in its own name. Accredited in 2009, in 2011 the graduate school had 11 students enrolled, who work closely with curators and they have access to the collections. The first seven graduates to complete the program were awarded their degrees on September 30, 2013. The dean of the graduate school is AMNH paleontologist John J. Flynn, and the namesake and major benefactor is Richard Gilder.

The MAT Earth Science Residency program was launched in 2012 to address a critical shortage of qualified science teachers in New York State, particularly in high-needs schools with diverse populations. In 2015, the MAT program officially joined the Richard Gilder Graduate School, with the NYS Board of Regents authorizing the Gilder School to grant the MAT degree. The program has about 16 graduates complete the program each year.

Books By American Museum Of Natural History And Complete Book Reviews

From the Land of the Totem Poles: The Northwest Coast Indian Art Collection at the American Museum of Natural HistoryAldona Jonaitis, Author, American Museum of Natural History, Author, Stephen S. Myers, PhotographerRose Center for Earth and Space: A Museum for the Twenty-First Century American Museum of Natural History, Author, Ellen Futter, Author, Ellen V. Futter, Foreword byBaby Elephant Joins the HerdBaby Dolphins First SwimABC AnimalsABC InsectsI Am Not a Dinosaur!

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Warburg Hall Of New York State Environments

Warburg Hall of New York State Environments is a one-story hall on the museum’s ground floor in between the Hall of North American Forests and the Grand Hall. Based on the town of Pine Plains and near-by Stissing Mountain in Dutchess County, the hall gives a multi-faceted presentation of the eco-systems typical of New York. Aspects covered include soil types, seasonal changes, and the impact of both humans and nonhuman animals on the environment. It is named for the German-American philanthropist, Felix M. Warburg. Originally known as the “Hall of Man and Nature”, Warburg Hall opened in 1951. It has changed little since and is now frequently regarded for its retro-modern styling. The hall shares many of the exhibit types featured throughout the museum as well as one display type, unique to Warburg, which features a recessed miniature diorama behind a foreground of species and specimens from the environment depicted.

Later Additions Restorations And Renovations

Since 1930, little has been added to the exterior of the original building. The architect Kevin Roche and his firm Roche-Dinkeloo have been responsible for the master planning of the museum since the 1990s. Various renovations to both the interior and exterior have been carried out. Renovations to the Dinosaur Hall were undertaken beginning in 1991, and the museum also restored the mural in Roosevelt Memorial Hall in 2010. In 1992 the Roche-Dinkeloo firm designed the eight-story AMNH Library. However, the entirety of the master plan was ultimately not fully realized, and by 2015, the museum consisted of 25 separate buildings that were poorly connected.

The museum’s south façade, spanning 77th Street from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue was cleaned, repaired, and re-emerged in 2009. Steven Reichl, a spokesman for the museum, said that work would include restoring 650 black-cherry window frames and stone repairs. The museum’s consultant on the latest renovation is Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., an architectural and engineering firm with headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois.

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American Museum Of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than 2 million square feet . AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

The mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: “To discover, interpret, and disseminatethrough scientific research and educationknowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.”

Hall Of Birds Of The World

The global diversity of bird species is exhibited in this hall. 12 dioramas showcase various ecosystems around the world and provide a sample of the varieties of birds that live there. Example dioramas include South Georgia featuring king penguins and skuas, the East African plains featuring secretarybirds and bustards, and the Australian outback featuring honeyeaters, cockatoos, and kookaburras.

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Milstein Hall Of Ocean Life

The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life focuses on , botany and . The hall is most famous for its 94-foot -longblue whale model, suspended from the ceiling behind its dorsal fin.

The upper level of the hall exhibits the vast array of ecosystems present in the ocean. Dioramas compare and contrast the life in these different settings including polar seas, kelp forests, mangroves, coral reefs and the bathypelagic. It attempts to show how vast and varied the oceans are while encouraging common themes throughout. The lower, and arguably more famous, half of the hall consists of several large dioramas of larger marine organisms. It is on this level that the famous “Squid and the Whale” diorama sits, depicting a hypothetical fight between the two creatures. Other notable exhibits in this hall include the Andros Coral Reef Diorama, which is the only two-level diorama in the Western Hemisphere. One of the most famous icons of the museum is a life-sized fiberglass model of a 94-foot long Atlantic blue whale. The whale was redesigned dramatically in the 2003 renovation: its flukes and fins were readjusted, a navel was added, and it was repainted from a dull gray to various rich shades of blue. Upper dioramas are smaller versions of the ecosystems when the bottom versions are much bigger and more life like.

History

David S And Ruth L Gottesman Hall Of Planet Earth

The David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth is a permanent hall devoted to the history of Earth, from accretion to the origin of life and contemporary human impacts on the planet. Several sections also discuss the studies of Earth systems, including geology, glaciology, atmospheric sciences, and volcanology.

The exhibit is famous for its large, touchable rock specimens. The hall features striking samples of banded iron and deformed conglomerate rocks, as well as granites, sandstones, lavas, and three black smokers.

The north section of the hall, which deals primarily with plate tectonics, is arranged to mimic the Earth’s structure, with the core and mantle at the center and crustal features on the perimeter.

Other areas of the museum contain repositories of life from the past. The Whale Bone Storage Room is a cavernous space in which powerful winches come down from the ceiling to move the giant fossil bones about. The museum attic upstairs includes even more storage facilities, such as the Elephant Room, while the tusk vault and boar vault are downstairs from the attic.:11920

Many of the fossils on display represent unique and historic pieces that were collected during the museum’s golden era of worldwide expeditions . On a smaller scale, expeditions continue into the present and have resulted in additions to the collections from Vietnam, Madagascar, South America, and central and eastern Africa.

The 4th floor includes the following halls:

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Allison And Roberto Mignone Halls Of Gems And Minerals

The Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals houses thousands of rare gems, minerals specimens and pieces of jewelry. The halls closed in 2017 to undergo a $32 million redesign by Ralph Appelbaum Associates and reopened to the general public in June 2021. The redesigned exhibits adopt newer philosophies in exhibit design, including a focus on storytelling, interactivity, and connecting ideas across disciplines. The halls explore a range of topics, including the diversification of mineral species over the course of Earth’s history, plate tectonics, and the stories of specific gems.

The halls display rare samples chosen from among the more than 100,000 pieces in the museum’s collection including the Star of India, the Patricia Emerald, and the DeLong Star Ruby.

• Assorted faceted and polished minerals

• Quartz var. amethyst geode

Rose Center For Earth And Space

The Hayden Planetarium, connected to the museum, is now part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, housed in a glass cube containing the spherical Space Theater, designed by James Stewart Polshek. The Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway is one of the most popular exhibits in the Rose Center, which opened February 19, 2000.

Tom Hanks provided the voice-over for the first planetarium show during the opening of the new Rose Center for Earth & Space in the Hayden Planetarium in 2000. Since then such celebrities as Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Maya Angelou have been featured.

Founded in 1869, the AMNH Exhibitions Lab has since produced thousands of installations. The department is notable for its integration of new scientific research into immersive art and multimedia presentations. In addition to the famous dioramas at its home museum and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, the lab has also produced international exhibitions and software such as the Digital Universe Atlas.

The exhibitions team currently consists of over sixty artists, writers, preparators, designers and programmers. The department is responsible for the creation of two to three exhibits per year. These extensive shows typically travel nationally to sister natural history museums. They have produced, among others, the first exhibits to discuss Darwinian evolution,human-induced climate change and the mesozoic mass extinction via asteroid.

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