Artist rendering of Inky and Old Blue together.
Artists have long been in love with the American Museum of Natural History.
Remember how Holden Caulfield takes comfort in the way the museum never changes? And how young Margot and Richie run away to live there in The Royal Tenenbaums? An entire movie was named after the squid and the whale exhibit. In the parting scene, the hero stares at the two titans locked in a terrible embrace and comes to the conclusion that life kinda sucks – but in a pretty and metaphorical way.
I understand the fascination, what with the building’s myriad windows, passageways and vaults, a repository for all earthly knowledge. While apartment hunting, I ignored the low square footage and incessant construction next-door because the museum is perfectly framed in my window. After a dutiful courtship, this weekend I bought a ticket to see what all the inspiration was about.
The Tenenbaum kids spend a night in the museum.
First, I checked out a series of ancient dioramas, featuring animals who were hunted in distant lands, dragged across the ocean, stuffed and posed in lifelike scenarios a century ago. “It’s like a zoo for lazy people,” Chris mused while standing beneath the elephant’s motionless trunk. A spooky, taxidermy zoo.
We soldiered on to the dinosaur exhibits, the most impressive. Real fossils and life-size casts bring to life all the dinos we learned about in school: Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops. I loved reading about the archaeologist superstars who hunted these old bones. I’m told that in the belly and attic of the museum, secret rooms house more fossils. There’s an entire room for whale bone storage.
The whale swims alone.
We saved the star for last, heading to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life to admire the giant squid and whale, and ponder the metaphor of two fake sea creatures doing battle, forever suspended above whiny kids and French tourists.
I was disappointed to realize that the life-size replicas of Inky and Old Blue hang in different rooms while the “clash of the titans” diorama is a separate, smaller artist’s rendering. Why not take a cue from the artist and string the squid up beside the 94-foot whale — the largest replica in the world?
It was such a puzzle that I later called the museum staff to inquire, and after a lengthy discussion amongst themselves, they concluded it was an issue of mechanics.
Apparently, the whale needs space. The usual story.
Speaking of fossils, the day after I visited the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History, Joan Rivers showed up to win The Celebrity Apprentice finale.
After the taping, black limos parked on side streets and the party let out for cocktails in the back foyer. Beneath a giant poster about climate change, the Donald set up a table with hundreds of copies of his latest book, Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life. An odd pairing indeed.
