Tending museums through the crisis
Atlas Obscura has an article by Jessica Leigh Hester looking at how curators and staff are tending museum collections and infrastructure while hallways are e...
Atlas Obscura has an article by Jessica Leigh Hester looking at how curators and staff are tending museum collections and infrastructure while hallways are e...
Victoria Gibbon of the University of Cape Town has written a piece for The Conversation recounting how UCT is addressing some historical wrongs in the develo...
Last week I commented on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ recent statement on access to data: “Biological Anthropology association speak...
Phillip Pantuso of the Guardian reports on the legal battle over the ownership of significant dinosaur fossils: “Perhaps the best dinosaur fossil ever discov...
The biological anthropologist Israel Hershkovitz has a nice essay in Nature discussing a new exhibit at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History’s Dan David ...
This is an important article in Chicago magazine, “An Artist Addresses the Field Museum’s Problematic Native American Hall”. The article is a review of a new...
On the subject of natural history museums changing for the future, this update from the Simons Foundation is fascinating: “Science Sandbox: The changing face...
What is the value of museum collections? One way of looking at this value is to watch people who newly describe species based upon specimens from collections...
I have no political position on the impending departure of Britain from the European Union. Nevertheless, I wanted to point to this article in The Guardian t...
This came across my feed this morning: “San Diego Museum of Man In Balboa Park Wants Your Help Deciding New Name”.
Undark is running an op/ed by Aspen Reese, a former visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, about the recent (and ongoing) flap concern...
Linking to a provocative piece that “VR Will Break Museums”.
The museum and research center at Sangiran, Indonesia is capped by a large copper conical roof. The surrounding countryside is the source of Early and Middle...
The public exhibition of the Homo naledi fossils at Maropeng is going to close soon, and they are planning a “Naledi Farewell Concert” for next Sunday!
Last week Lee Berger and our team announced the first series of findings from the Rising Star Expedition and subsequent analyses of the hominin fossil remain...
Smithsonian Magazine sent Joshua Hammer to tour the new facsimile recreation of Chauvet Cave, which is called Caverne du Pont d’Arc: “Finally, the Beauty of ...
The Chicago Tribune sent reporter Christopher Borrelli to the Field Museum to see how bodies are reduced to skeletons: “Inside the Field Museum’s hidden fles...
Sara Perry writing on Savage Minds, this time with an interesting historical story about the Wellcome Collection’s recent “Brains: Mind as Matter” exhibition...
The Orange County Register covers the final exhibition of the famous “Lucy” skeleton in the United States, at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California: “Fa...
On the subject of Homo erectus reconstructions, here’s a famous clip:
Every museum that does early hominins has to find a way to present the Laetoli footprints, and I’ve seen some very imaginative ones. The new exhibition at th...
Here’s a closeup of the reconstruction of Homo erectus by Elisabeth Dayns, again at the new exhibition of the Natural History Museum, Vienna:
This week I’ve been at the Vienna Natural History Museum to do some work. It’s one of the great museums of the world, and they have a new human evolution exh...
I’m in Java, and even though I’m ahead of most of the world’s time zones, I’m behind on the news. This news from the University of Witswatersrand is an excit...
The international version of Der Spiegel is running an English-language profile of the traveling CT-scan project from Jean-Jacques Hublin and the Max-Planck ...
The American Museum of Natural History has arranged an event featuring Richard Leakey and Don Johanson, which is happening tomorrow evening: “Human Evolution...
Artist Noah Scalin gets a play date at the Mutter Museum, and here’s what he does:
I’m in the Washington D.C. area on business this week. Yesterday I got the chance to visit the new Human Origins Hall at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of...
I’ve been browsing the Smithsonian’s</i> website supporting their Human Origins hall. There’s a nice feature about the archaeological work at Olorgesai...
Rex Dalton reports on changes to the federal implementation rules of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: “Rule poses threat to museum...
Thanks to all those readers who sent me links to the new human origins hall at the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington D.C. The NY Times’ Edwar...
A very interesting essay by Edward Rothstein in the NY Times special museum section: “The thrill of science, tamed by agendas”.
Reuters correspondent Zoran Radosavljevic reports on the recent opening of the new museum at Krapina, Croatia. The museum is devoted to Neandertals, and repr...
Smithsonian magazine has a feature highlighting the fleshed-out hominin reconstructions of John Gurche (“A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces”).
After this week’s description of the new public accessibility of the Dmanisi site, a reader sends a link to a tour of Sterkfontein by The Guardian’s David Sm...
Nature this week is running a short review of a visit to Dmanisi by journalist Katharine Barnes (Pay link):
I’ve just returned from a week in Leiden, the old university city of the Netherlands. I was a guest of the archaeology faculty, in particular Wil Roebroeks a...
Well, my husband and I braved Times Square and went to the exhibit a week ago Sunday. The streets were packed, it was hot and humid -- and in the Discovery...
The editors of Scientific American offer arguments for greater data and public access to fossils in their current (September 2009) issue: “Fossils for All: S...
In “Dawn at the museum”, Olivia Judson points to the huge potential of ancient DNA techniques to wring new answers out of old taxidermied specimens.
Brian Switek reviews the “Lucy’s Legacy” exhibit, now in New York:
The NY Times has a review of the Pacific Science Center’s Lucy experience, which came to an end this week. They’re blaming the financial loss on Obama:
In the course of my research for the ape strength article, I ran across an old piece from The Atlantic Monthly, in which Alexander Young gives a long satire ...
Has Lucy become a white elephant for museums?
Another review of the evolution exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, this time a long piece by Julia Klein in th...
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has just opened a new exhibit on human evolution, titled "Surviving: The Body of Evide...
OK, I have to take a moment off from Just Science week, to note this AP article about creationist protests of the National Museums of Kenya: