Origami Holiday Tree, from A to Z

Tuesday, November 24 11:54 am

You won’t want to miss the Museum’s magical Origami Holiday Tree, which this year is decked out in an animal alphabet on the theme “Origami, A to Z.” Designed and decorated by OrigamiUSA, the American national society devoted to the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding, the tree features origami letters surrounded by intricate models of animals that either belong to the scientific category that starts with that letter or have an alphabetically-appropriate name, from aardvark to Pterandon to Tasmanian wolf.

Many of the models were chosen to showcase the rich diversity of mammals, living and extinct, featured in the current exhibition Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time. Half the fun is locating specific creatures—a unique challenge this year given the inclusion of Batodonoides vanhouteni, an extinct mammal so small it would have been able to perch comfortably on the tip of a pencil eraser.

The tree will be on view through Sunday, January 3, in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall on the first floor.