Hairy Museum of Natural History

Last week, Roxanne and I (along with a handful of other folks from the NMMNHS) popped up to Denver for the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums. Lots of nifty stuff to see and hear, Denver’s great selection of museums to visit, and among the thousands of attendees were plenty of old contacts to catch up with and new museum folk to meet. I sat in on several great sessions dealing with museum exhibitry, interactive tech, and engaging web visitors, and as I spent some time going through my notes I’ll keep an eye out for interesting tidbits to post here. But for now I’ll put up some quick pics from the Museum Expo—dozens of vendors of all stripes packed into the Exhibit Hall of the Colorado Convention Center.

As might be expected, my picture-taking skewed heavily toward the paleo:

A cast Velociraptor skeleton and life restoration at the Pangaea Partners booth. Very nice coloring/patterning on the feathers:

This beauty was sculpted by Dennis J. Wilson of Pangaea Designs.

A rather different flavor of feathered theropod was on display at the Phil Fraley Productions booth:

This fantastically meticulous restoration of a dodo (on the left, of course) was commissioned by the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity in Singapore. Reprints of a pair of articles detailing the work that went into this piece were available at this booth, but are also available for download from this page.

The above models of a lobefinned fish and early tetrapod caught my eye at the Whitman Zahourek Foundation booth. The Foundation promotes anatomy education, and brought to my attention the Anatomy in Clay classes/manikins, which provide plastic skeletons of dogs, horses, and humans that allow for the attachment of plasticine “soft tissue” structures, as in the muscles attached to “Caniken,” below:

For me, this looks to be an excellent way to gain a more intuitive understanding of how muscle attaches to bone in paleo-restorations—certainly much less ‘visceral’ than dissection. Not that I’ve got anything against viscera, mind you, but I’ve always preferred additive processes to reductive ones. I’ll definitely be looking further into this.

Wish I could say that I’ll be posting more regularly, but I’m afraid things are going to continue to be slow here as I focus most of my time/energy into the upcoming Triassic exhibit at the Day Job—when I last mentioned it we were shooting for a March deadline, but the final opening date has since (thankfully) been set at May 17th. Now less than two weeks off…

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia.

Comments on record: (1)

A little more news on the upcoming Triassic exhibit at the day job—Discovery News writer Larry O’Hanlon met with the NMMNHS Triassic Team last week, and has posted a teaser article up on his blog, Earth Impacts, with the promise of more to come.

The post includes a couple of illustrations done for the hall: a rendering of the early mammal Adelobasileus by illustrator Mary Sundstrom, and my own painting of a large archosauriform known from a few dozen well-weathered fossils from the Middle Triassic of New Mexico. The restoration (shown above) is based largely on big erythrosuchian predators like Erythrosuchus and Shansisuchus (from South Africa and China, respectively).

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia, The Day Job, Triassic.

Comments on record: (4)

The Albuquerque Tribune ran a story today on the project that’s been keeping me busy at the day job: a new Triassic Exhibit opening this March at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

This is the project I’ve been looking forward to working on since I started at the museum almost a decade ago, and finally all the pieces have come together to pull it off.  Everyone involved in the exhibit is itching to show off some the fantastic Triassic fossils from the museum collections. The article only hits some of the highlights: this photo shows a beautifully preserved young Coelophysis from the Museum’s Ghost Ranch block (read the article for more Coelophysis-as-cannibal news). Another picture shows a the beginnings of a life-sized model of a New Mexican erythrosuchian, while the final position of one of the big stars remains tastefully hidden until the opening.

I’m not certain how much I’ll be able to share here until the exhibit opens, but I’ll definitely pass along any info that’s been made public before then.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia, The Day Job, Triassic.

Comments on record: (9)

Museums, it seems, are in a constant struggle to reinvent themselves, updating and enhancing their displays to reflect both the current understanding of particular topics as well as contemporary views on how best to engage their public. On the whole, I happen to feel that these changes are generally beneficial to both the institutions and their audiences. Still, there is an undeniable appeal to the idea of a timeless museum, where one can share the experience of a particular specimen or diorama or exhibit with visitors from generations past or, one hopes, those yet to come.

I was reminded of this during a recent visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which is now only days away from unveiling the first part of its extensively remodeled dinosaur halls. While there, I was pleased to see that an old taxidermy mount was still on display in its upper floors, one that had caught my attention when I first came across it some 15 years ago, and, as I subsequently learned, had made an impression on a young Charles Knight when he saw it at the American Museum more than a century prior.

From Charles R. Knight: Autobiography of an Artist (published by G.T. Labs):

“I particularly remember one striking group (our only example) of an Arab camel rider being attacked by a lion. Perhaps other men my age will recall this dramatic piece which for some reason I never clearly understood was in later years given to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. I always regretted its going as it certainly was a thrilling bit of taxidermy, and only an artist could have done it. The man of course was wax, but his expression as he sat astride the camel’s neck to escape the claws of the big cat was well worth seeing. A dead lioness with a little red paint for blood lay at the feet of the camel, and this artificial gore was, I fear, the cause of it being sent away, as it was thought too sensational for a staid institution like our Museum.”

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia.

Comments on record: (3)

That’s New Mexico Friends of Paleontology, not the Fraternal Order of Police. This Monday night at 7:00pm, I’ll be giving a little presentation for the October meeting of the NM Friends of Paleontology. I think the title of the talk is going to be “An Artist’s view of the Triassic,” but I may have to pull a last minute switch and call it “Sketches of the Triassic” since, as usual, I haven’t got as many polished pieces together as I would have liked.

Still, I’ve got a good handful of concept drawings, preliminary studies, and works in progress that should provide a sneak peek at some of the exciting goings-on in the Exhibits Department at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The New Mexico Friends of Paleo. meetings are free and open to the public, so if there are any interested readers in the Albuquerque area, feel free to pop in on Monday!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia, Paleo-Pop, The Day Job, Triassic.

Comments on record: (2)