Friends of the Museum celebrated its sixteenth annual family party on October 20 throughout the magnificent halls. Live animals, a dinosaur dig for fossils, experiments and simulated space travel were some of the many activities going on this year.
Children had a chance to meet with AMNH scientists at the “Museum Science Center” where they encountered live leeches, spiders, tortoises and poison dart frogs. The band Brady Rymer and The Little Band That Could performed under the Big Blue Whale.
Highway of An Empire: The Great Inca Road, an exhibition of over 35 striking photographs featuring the 25,000 miles of roads and trails that the Incas built six centuries ago in South America is now open at the American Museum of Natural History. In this series of stunning photographs, Highway of An Empire reveals the diversity of this road system—from broad paved highways to woven suspension bridges to beaten tracks through barren desert—and of the landscape through which it travels.
The Great Inca Road will be on view through September 2010.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Hayden Planetarium’s director, taped a segment of PBS’ ‘NOVA scienceNOW‘ earlier this month at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. The NOVA episode focuses on the dwarf planet Pluto and Tyson’s book “The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet.” In true Disney fashion the astrophysicist joined Pluto, the famous cartoon character, for a snapshot.
The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival- the longest-running documentary film festival in the United States – will celebrate 33 years at the American Museum of Natural History this November, screening an outstanding and varied selection of titles culled from more than 1,000 submissions. The Festival is distinguished by extraordinary films that tackle diverse and challenging subjects, as well as exciting discussions with filmmakers and special guest speakers.
The Festival runs from November 12-15. Here’s a sampling of trailers from the Festival.
Watch as Hazel Davies, AMNH’s Manger of Living Exhibits, and Whitney Doreen Ortiz walk through the vivarium and interact with butterflies from around the world — blue morphos, striking scarlet swallowtails and large owl butterflies.
