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...
All posts tagged with museums
Working toward more ethical anatomical collections at the University of Cape Town
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...
Stopping ‘wasteful recollection of data already held by other research groups’
Last week I commented on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ recent statement on access to data: “Biological Anthropology association speak...
Dinosaur property war
Phillip Pantuso of the Guardian reports on the legal battle over the ownership of significant dinosaur fossils: “Perhaps the best dinosaur fossil ever discov...
A human evolution exhibit in Israel
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 ...
Link: Field Museum Native American collection
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...
Micro-museums, cabinets of curiosities
On the subject of natural history museums changing for the future, this update from the Simons Foundation is fascinating: “Science Sandbox: The changing face...
Some thoughts on museums, new species descriptions, and collections
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...
Brexit fears affecting U.K. archaeologists
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...
‘Museum of Man’ to change name
This came across my feed this morning: “San Diego Museum of Man In Balboa Park Wants Your Help Deciding New Name”.
Ideological purity tests are not the way to build public engagement with science
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...
Will virtual reality compete with museums or help them?
Linking to a provocative piece that “VR Will Break Museums”.
Photo: Sangiran Museum
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...
Link: ‘Naledi farewell concert’ at Maropeng
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!
Link: Announcement of Homo naledi
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...
Link: Touring the new facsimile of Chauvet
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 Field Museum beetle colony
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...
The brains behind an exhibition
Sara Perry writing on Savage Minds, this time with an interesting historical story about the Wellcome Collection’s recent “Brains: Mind as Matter” exhibition...
Lucy returns to public display in California
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...
"Modern man"
On the subject of Homo erectus reconstructions, here’s a famous clip:
Photo: Laetoli footprints
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...
Photo: Daynes Homo erectus reconstruction
Here’s a closeup of the reconstruction of Homo erectus by Elisabeth Dayns, again at the new exhibition of the Natural History Museum, Vienna:
Photo: Qafzeh 11 and Qafzeh 9
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...
Live preparation of "Karabo" skeleton streaming worldwide
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 great world CT-scanning tour
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 ...
AMNH Leakey-Johanson event
The American Museum of Natural History has arranged an event featuring Richard Leakey and Don Johanson, which is happening tomorrow evening: “Human Evolution...
Brain slice art
Artist Noah Scalin gets a play date at the Mutter Museum, and here’s what he does:
Review of the Smithsonian's new Human Origins Hall
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...
Red beds
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...
NAGPRA rule revision
Rex Dalton reports on changes to the federal implementation rules of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: “Rule poses threat to museum...
New Smithsonian human origins hall
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...
Museums decentering the human
A very interesting essay by Edward Rothstein in the NY Times special museum section: “The thrill of science, tamed by agendas”.
Krapina Neandertal museum
Reuters correspondent Zoran Radosavljevic reports on the recent opening of the new museum at Krapina, Croatia. The museum is devoted to Neandertals, and repr...
"A sort of bovine contentment"
Smithsonian magazine has a feature highlighting the fleshed-out hominin reconstructions of John Gurche (“A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces”).
A Sterkfontein visit
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...
A Dmanisi visit
Nature this week is running a short review of a visit to Dmanisi by journalist Katharine Barnes (Pay link):
My Leiden adventure
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...
Mailbag: The Lucy exhibit
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...
Fossil access editorial
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...
Olivia Judson: Museum collections in the DNA age
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.
Legacy hominids
Brian Switek reviews the “Lucy’s Legacy” exhibit, now in New York:
Lucy Seattle review
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:
P. T. Barnum's gorilla
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 ...
Lucy exhibit a loser for Seattle
Has Lucy become a white elephant for museums?
Penn museum evolution review
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...
New Penn evolution exhibit, and the "Year of Evolution"
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has just opened a new exhibit on human evolution, titled "Surviving: The Body of Evide...
Creationists protest National Museums of Kenya
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: