San Diego Natural History Museum ~ December 27, 2006
The last time we were at the San Diego Natural History Museum was probably about ten years ago, and boy was I shocked when I visited it this time. It sure wasn’t the same old natural history museum that I remembered! I didn’t realize that it had been renovated in 2001, with a new wing added on. I guess I’m just old-fashioned, because I liked it better the way it was. They call it the Natural History Museum of the 21st Century, but now its style is more like a hands-on science center.
The Natural History Museum building on Balboa Park’s Prado is a registered historic site, having been dedicated on January 14, 1933. I’m thankful that at least the familiar entrance on El Prado was left intact. Nevertheless, once you step inside it looks like the building was gutted out and opened up. Originally, the north and east exterior facades were meant to be temporary walls slated for future expansion. The new wing extends from those temporary walls of 1933.
The museum now has two major entrances – the ornate historic south entrance adjacent to the main fountain in Balboa Park, and the new north-facing entrance across from a giant fig tree. The new wing is mostly a big open atrium as far as I can see, along with a snack bar, gift shop, exhibit hall, big screen theater, and large lobby. That long bronze “crack” in the floor is actually a reproduction of the San Andreas Fault, and there is a large relief map on the back wall depicting the Southern California-Baja California region.
At the time we were there, they were showing Al Gore’s propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth. So far I wasn’t impressed. They should just stick with their “Ocean Oasis” movie. Downstairs, the traveling exhibit on “Dinosaurs: Reel & Robotic” was pretty interesting since our family likes movies and animation, and it was neat to learn about the history of our favorite monster films like “King Kong” and “Godzilla.” However, it still wasn’t what I would consider to be natural history.
Where were the rooms full of dinosaur bones and dioramas? The new construction more than doubles the size of the old building, and yet it seems like there aren’t that many exhibits. There is a comprehensive Wildfire section focusing on the San Diego fire of 2003. They also have an interactive walk-through prehistoric environment, but it’s all about evolution and extinction. I’m so sick of having evolution force-fed to us wherever we go. Now they’re spoon-feeding it to the kids with clever hands-on exhibits in attempt to show how evolution relates to us. I just want to have an opportunity to see the actual fossils and come to my own conclusions, thank you. And what about the flora, fauna, and habitats of today? I saw better displays of those at Cabela’s, and that was free!
One thing that I did like was the giant computerized globe showing the tectonic plate movement and shifting continents. That was pretty cool. And the Foucault Pendulum is still there, fascinating onlookers as they watch it swing back and forth and wait for it to knock down a small wooden tree on the floor. My 16-year-old son is studying Physics right now, and when he started telling me about the oscillation rate of the pendulum, a guy turned and looked over at him as if wondering what he was talking about.
I finally did find one room downstairs that still had the feeling of the old museum! Natural Treasures Past & Present has lots of fossils and rocks, insects and stuffed animals, in glass display cases as well as live critters including a rattlesnake, scorpion, and black widow spider.
I guess we picked a bad time to go, because I found out later that a lot more exhibits are in the planning stages but haven’t been installed yet. In the future, there will be a state-of-the-art interactive walk across Southern California – from the ocean to the mountains to the desert – with state-of-the-art dioramas, interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations, etc. Now that sounds more like it! To learn more about the exhibits, see:
http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/index.html
http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/future/index.html
By the way, tickets already went on sale a year in advance for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition which will be coming to the museum from June 29–December 31, 2007. The Israel Antiquities Authority will be bringing one of the world's greatest archaeological discoveries to the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Did You Know…? In 1943, the U.S. Navy took over the Natural History Museum for hospital use. They added a nurse’s station and an elevator designed to handle gurneys, and turned the museum into an infectious disease ward!
The Natural History Museum building on Balboa Park’s Prado is a registered historic site, having been dedicated on January 14, 1933. I’m thankful that at least the familiar entrance on El Prado was left intact. Nevertheless, once you step inside it looks like the building was gutted out and opened up. Originally, the north and east exterior facades were meant to be temporary walls slated for future expansion. The new wing extends from those temporary walls of 1933.
The museum now has two major entrances – the ornate historic south entrance adjacent to the main fountain in Balboa Park, and the new north-facing entrance across from a giant fig tree. The new wing is mostly a big open atrium as far as I can see, along with a snack bar, gift shop, exhibit hall, big screen theater, and large lobby. That long bronze “crack” in the floor is actually a reproduction of the San Andreas Fault, and there is a large relief map on the back wall depicting the Southern California-Baja California region.
At the time we were there, they were showing Al Gore’s propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth. So far I wasn’t impressed. They should just stick with their “Ocean Oasis” movie. Downstairs, the traveling exhibit on “Dinosaurs: Reel & Robotic” was pretty interesting since our family likes movies and animation, and it was neat to learn about the history of our favorite monster films like “King Kong” and “Godzilla.” However, it still wasn’t what I would consider to be natural history.
Where were the rooms full of dinosaur bones and dioramas? The new construction more than doubles the size of the old building, and yet it seems like there aren’t that many exhibits. There is a comprehensive Wildfire section focusing on the San Diego fire of 2003. They also have an interactive walk-through prehistoric environment, but it’s all about evolution and extinction. I’m so sick of having evolution force-fed to us wherever we go. Now they’re spoon-feeding it to the kids with clever hands-on exhibits in attempt to show how evolution relates to us. I just want to have an opportunity to see the actual fossils and come to my own conclusions, thank you. And what about the flora, fauna, and habitats of today? I saw better displays of those at Cabela’s, and that was free!
One thing that I did like was the giant computerized globe showing the tectonic plate movement and shifting continents. That was pretty cool. And the Foucault Pendulum is still there, fascinating onlookers as they watch it swing back and forth and wait for it to knock down a small wooden tree on the floor. My 16-year-old son is studying Physics right now, and when he started telling me about the oscillation rate of the pendulum, a guy turned and looked over at him as if wondering what he was talking about.
I finally did find one room downstairs that still had the feeling of the old museum! Natural Treasures Past & Present has lots of fossils and rocks, insects and stuffed animals, in glass display cases as well as live critters including a rattlesnake, scorpion, and black widow spider.
I guess we picked a bad time to go, because I found out later that a lot more exhibits are in the planning stages but haven’t been installed yet. In the future, there will be a state-of-the-art interactive walk across Southern California – from the ocean to the mountains to the desert – with state-of-the-art dioramas, interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations, etc. Now that sounds more like it! To learn more about the exhibits, see:
http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/index.html
http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/future/index.html
By the way, tickets already went on sale a year in advance for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition which will be coming to the museum from June 29–December 31, 2007. The Israel Antiquities Authority will be bringing one of the world's greatest archaeological discoveries to the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Did You Know…? In 1943, the U.S. Navy took over the Natural History Museum for hospital use. They added a nurse’s station and an elevator designed to handle gurneys, and turned the museum into an infectious disease ward!
Labels: Balboa Park, Museum, natural history, San Diego, science
posted by Teri @ 1:34 PM
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