LAIH Field Trip: The Natural History Museum!

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LAIH_NHM_Field_Trip_3On Friday the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities went on another field trip. This time we went to the Natural History Museum. (Click the image for a larger panorama from one of the dinosaur halls.) If you’ve not been there for a while, this is not the museum you remember. It has been transformed, under the leadership of Jane Pisano (President and Director of the Museum, who gave us a splendid talk over lunch), adding several new spaces, a special garden, and new foci in its programming (such as special displays and research programs highlighting urban ecosystems – featuring coyotes, rats, squirrels, possums, Cooper’s hawks, doves, skunks, parrots, etc., (basically my back garden on a typical day, as you know from this blog), along with snakes, bedbugs, termites… The Nature all around us in the city of Los Angeles – fascinating actually.)

We had a tour of some of the spaces, breaking up into two groups (there were around 40 of us) and taking turns on two mini-tours (as we did for the Clark Library in December), one looking at the new dinosaur halls, the other the space dedicated to the urban environments I mentioned above. We learned a lot from our guides about what’s going on in the forefront of research in both areas, including programs the public can contribute to through their own observations.

We then had lunch in the rotunda, a part of the classic original building, under the impressive dome that you can see from the outside. Several tables were laid out, with our selection of boxed sandwiches of various sorts available, and we had a talk from President and Director Jane Pisano, who explained about the museum’s mission, including some of the things I described above. (I must mention here that Jane was introduced by our LAIH associate Director Allison Engel, who did her usual fantastic job of writing and delivering such a delightful and illuminating introduction. It must be said that it is worth it to come to our luncheons just to hear when Allison does an introduction. Everything else you might get is a bonus…!)

Overall, people seemed to enjoy the visit, and everyone seemed excited about what has been going on at the museum in recent times. As I said, it is not the museum you remember – it is far more, and continues to be a wonderful resource for the city. If you’ve not been in a while, come on back. If you have, come again to discover more and maybe to get engaged in various ways, like joining in some of the Citizen Science that is helping discover new species and new habitats in the urban environment that is LA, or just come and hang out and party at one of the First Fridays evenings (you may recall I hosted one a couple of years back). You can even take the subway there…

-cvj

A little slide show of some of our visit is below. Click on a thumbnail to start. (If the slide show does not show up, go to the album at picasa here.)

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