American Museum of Natural History

[avram]

Went to the American Museum of Natural History today. I’d been meaning to do this for a while, go to the museum and sketch things that aren’t moving, but somehow it took me till now to get around to it.

First stop was, well first stop was really the subway. I’d seen the mosaics on the walls of the station before, but today was the first time I’d noticed the designs on the floor, spiraling up out of the drain in front of the turnstiles, starting out with monocellular life and turning into various lineages of creatures, splitting off two lines of arthropods that I don’t know enough biology to identify, one branch later splitting into what I assumed were the bony and cartiligenous fishes, and one of those lines heading off down the stairs where I couldn’t follow because I’d already gone through the turnstiles. No sketches; maybe some other time.

First stop inside the museum was, well, actually I stuck my head in the cafe, and saw that in honor of the “Baseball as America” exhibit (and what the hell is that doing at a natural history museum?) they were serving hot dogs from stadia all over the country. I wasn’t hungry, so I moved on upstairs, through the Hall of Biodiversity (too dark for sketching, and no benches), past the Hall of Ocean Life (closed till next spring), through the North American Forests and NY State Environment displays (which are really showing their age; all that Bodoni and Futura looks so 1950s), and wound up at the Northwest Coast Indians display. (Well, OK, if masks and costumes and religious items belonging to various cultures constitute natural history, then I guess the arcane sports rituals of the Industrial Age North Americans are on-topic as well.) I found a bench near a colorful mask and sketched it out in marker and watercolor pencil, then blocked out a statue in water-soluble graphite.

On through Human Evolution, then back, up the stairs, and I was in the Hall of Asian Peoples. Lots of sketchworthy stuff here, but not enough places to sit, and most of what I did sketch wound up not being very scanworthy. Somewhere around there I found a display of ancient objects — mostly arrowheads — that included (a reproduction of) the Venus of Willendorf. The V. of W. is generally held to be some kind of fertility goddess. I’ve occasionally run into folks suggesting that it’s actually an early form of pornography, and while it’s entirely possible that early cultures might not have recognized a distinction between the two concepts (historical Babylon had temple prostitutes, so I’m not going to rule out some kind of sexy fertility goddess for Neolithic religions), while I was sketching I realized how very unpornographic the statue is. For one thing, she’s not doing anything. People in pornographic images are almost always active — having sex, masturbating, or just exposing themselves to the viewer. The pornographic Egyptian fertility statue we saw at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday showed a whole group of people getting it on in a very lively fashion (and the men had clearly imbibed some gingo elixir, if you know what I mean). But the V. of W. just stands there. She’s even got her legs tightly shut — what the heck kind of porn image is that?

From there I went through the Asian Mammals, the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, and made a left into the Hall of African Mammals. (Actually I stopped off at the restroom first.) It was getting late, half an hour to closing, so just quick marker sketches from here on in: the water buffalo’s horns caught my eye (I know, it sounds painful) from across the room, and then I zipped off the head of some kind of antelope-like animal (I forgot to note the species) while workmen were bringing in tables for some kind of event I assume was scheduled for that evening. On the way out, a dinosaur skull.

The new sketchbook performed admirably. The water soaked through a bit, but that happened even with the thicker paper in the old pad I was using.