AMNH Advance Schedule Announced
By: Gabrielle Sierra Apr. 19, 2011
Now you can prepare for your Museum visit by downloading the new American Museum of Natural History Explorer App, a groundbreaking enhanced navigation tool available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.iTunes.com/appstore/. The Explorer pinpoints your location within the Museum and offers turn-by-turn directions through the 46 permanent exhibition halls, and features customized tours, a fossil treasure hunt, and social media links for posting to Facebook and Twitter.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Exploring Space (working title)
November 19, 2011-August 12, 2012
Exploring Space launches visitors into the exciting future of space exploration as it boldly speculates on humanity's next steps "out there" in our solar system and beyond. The exhibition features a full-size recreation of a lunar habitat, a model of an elevator reaching up into space, a walk-through diorama of the Martian surface, and challenging computer interactive exhibits. See authentic equipment and models of historic spacecraft from select voyages in the past. Learn about robotic missions that are currently headed deeper and deeper into our own solar system, and what they might reveal. Understand why geologists are so interested in specimens from moons and other planets and what we can learn from them. And explore some possible spectacular missions of the future: returning humans to the Moon, landing on and deflecting a potentially deadly asteroid, or traveling to Mars-and perhaps even establishing colonies there. Is it possible within our lifetime? Will we discover evidence of life, past or present, on another planet? Find out what experts think the future will hold for us beyond planet Earth. Gallery 3, third floor
Frogs: A Chorus of Colors
May 28, 2011-January 8, 2012
Back by popular demand, this delightful exhibition introduces visitors to the colorful and richly diverse world of frogs. More than 200 live frogs, from the tiny golden mantella frog (which is less than an inch long) to the enormous African bullfrog (which can be as big as eight inches in diameter), are shown in their re-created habitats, complete with rock ledges, live plants, and waterfalls. Featuring approximately 25 species from such countries as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Russia, Suriname, the United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam, the exhibition explores the evolution and biology of these amphibians, their importance to ecosystems and the threats they face in the world's changing environments. Interactive stations throughout the exhibition invite visitors to activate recorded frog calls, view videos of frogs in action, and test their knowledge about these fascinating amphibians. Gallery 77, first floor
June 25, 2011-June 24, 2012
Whether Museum scientists are studying parasites, people, or planets in other solar systems, cutting-edge imaging technologies such as infrared photography, scanning electron microscopes, and CT scanners now make it possible to examine details that were previously unobservable. This exhibition, curated by Mark Siddall, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, features more than 20 sets of large-format images that showcase the wide range of research being conducted at the Museum as well as how various optical tools are used in scientific studies. Akeley Gallery,
second floorThe Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter
October 8, 2011-May 28, 2012
This exhibition, an annual favorite, features up to 500 live, free-flying tropical butterflies from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The butterflies are housed in a vivarium that approximates their natural habitat and includes live flowering plants that serve as nectar sources; features controlled artificial light, temperature, and humidity; and measures more than 60 feet long, 21 feet wide, and 10 feet high. Among the species included in the vivarium are iridescent blue morpho butterflies, striking scarlet swallowtails, and large owl butterflies. Text panels located immediately outside the vivarium offer information about the evolution and life cycle of butterflies, including sections on mimicry, diversity, and butterflies' important role in conservation. Whitney Hall of Oceanic Birds, second floor The Presenting Sponsor of the Butterfly Conservatory is ConEdison.
UPCOMING PROGRAMS
Mystery at the Museum: An Accomplice Experience
Saturdays and Sundays
From the creators of Accomplice, theatrical experiences set on the streets of New York City, Hollywood, and London, comes an exciting new way to explore the American Museum of Natural History. Part game, part theater, and part walking tour, Mystery at the Museum is an immersive and unique adventure through the Museum's halls. Visitors meet characters, follow clues, and solve puzzles as they unravel a tale that takes them through iconic Museum locations and behind-the-scenes areas. Challenging and engaging, comical and poignant, Mystery at the Museum is an experience that won't soon be forgotten. Appropriate for ages 10 and up.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 5-7pm
The Family Party-one of the Museum's best-loved traditions-features fascinating educational activities and spectacular entertainment for children of all ages. The Family Party is a special opportunity for children and adults to experience the wonders and magic of the Museum. Children will have the opportunity to interact with live animals, measure skulls, look into a microscope to see the inside of an ivory tusk, walk with a giant tortoise, explore the Museum Science Center, and much more. Tickets to this special event are $85 for children and $175 for adults. For event and ticket information, please visit last year's website: amnh.org/familyparty, call 212-313-7161, or email familyparty@amnh.org. Halloween Celebration
Monday, October 31, 2011
More than 30 of the Museum's popular halls will be open from 4 to 7 pm for trick-or-treating, arts and crafts, fun with roaming cartoon characters, and live performances. Past performers and characters have included Curious George®, Winnie-the-Pooh, Strawberry Shortcake, Clifford the Big Red Dog®, Madeline, Maya & MiguelTM, David Grover and the Big Bear Band, Louie & Subanda, performers from the Big Apple Circus, stilt walkers, and master pumpkin carver Hugh McMahon.Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival
November 10-13, 2011
The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, the longest-running documentary film festival in the United States, will screen a selection of titles culled from over 2,000 submissions. The Festival was founded by the Museum in 1977 to honor pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead's 75th birthday and 50th year at the Museum. Kaufmann and Linder Theaters, first floorOrigami Holiday Tree
November 21, 2010-January 2, 2011
An annual Museum tradition, the delightfully decorated Origami Holiday Tree has marked the start of the holiday season at the Museum for more than 30 years. Volunteers begin folding in July to complete the 500 creations that will be displayed on the tree. During the holiday season, volunteers will be on hand to teach visitors of all ages the art of origami folding. Past themes have included Discovery, Folding the Museum, Fantastic Creatures: Mythic and Real; Origami in Flight; Under the Sea; Pocket Posy; and Origami Safari. Kwanzaa Celebration
Saturday, December 31, 2011
This cultural festival of African and African-American performing and visual arts commemorates the seven principles of Kwanzaa. A feast for the soul and senses, this family-friendly all-day event offers African dance, spoken word, live musical performances, and traditional crafts. A bustling Kwanzaa Marketplace, located on the mezzanine level of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, will feature vendors, visual artists, and craftspeople, as well as representatives from major cultural institutions. In addition, special Kwanzaa foods will be available in the Museum Food Court. Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, first floorThe Kwanzaa Celebration is made possible, in part, by the Ford Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., the Tolan Family, and the family of Frederick H. Leonhardt.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONSThe World's Largest Dinosaurs
April 16, 2011-January 2, 2012
The World's Largest Dinosaurs will focus on sauropods, a group that includes the largest animals ever to have walked on Earth. Sauropod dinosaurs were extraordinarily successful, surviving for more than 100 million years. The World's Largest Dinosaurs will examine the biology and behavior of sauropods, looking particularly at how these animals evolved to such tremendous sizes. The highlight of the exhibition will be a life-sized model of the 60-foot-long sauropod Mamenchisaurus. The dramatic model will be fully fleshed out on one side, while the other side will be a "visible dinosaur," revealing bones, muscles, and internal organs. The exhibition will also feature specimens from the Museum's collections of sauropod teeth, vertebrae, skin impressions, and a variety of other ancient specimens. Hands-on, computer-based activities will let visitors investigate adaptations that allowed these animals to grow so big. Gallery 4, fourth floor The World's Largest Dinosaurs is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with Coolture Marketing, Bogotá, Colombia.The World's Largest Dinosaurs is proudly supported by Bank of America.
The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter
October 16, 2010-May 30, 2011
This exhibition, an annual favorite, features up to 500 live, free-flying tropical butterflies from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The butterflies are housed in a vivarium that approximates their natural habitat and includes live flowering plants that serve as nectar sources; features controlled artificial light, temperature, and humidity; and measures more than 60 feet long, 21 feet wide, and 10 feet high. Among the species included in the vivarium are iridescent blue morpho butterflies, striking scarlet swallowtails, and large owl butterflies. Text panels located immediately outside the vivarium offer information about the evolution and life cycle of butterflies, including sections on mimicry, diversity, and butterflies' important role in conservation. Whitney Hall of Oceanic Birds, second floor
November 20, 2010-August 14, 2011
This stimulating exhibition will give visitors a new perspective and insight into their own brains using imaginative art, vivid brain scan imaging, and thrilling interactive exhibits that will engage the whole family. Brain: The Inside Story features the latest cutting-edge research from the treating of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to the recent studies of more intangible elements like the mapping of our emotional responses.In this exhibition, explore how the brain-a product of millions of years of evolution-produces thoughts, senses, and feelings; experience how the brain is continually changing at different stages of life; and discover how new understanding of the workings of the brain may help scientists repair and reverse declines in brain function.Brain: The Inside Story begins with a walk-through installation by Spanish artist Daniel Canogar that evokes the tangled forest of 100 billion communicating brain cells in a breathtaking representation of firing neurons. Visitors continue on to explore their senses, emotions, thoughts, and memory through a series of videos, interactive installations, and exhibits. Visitors will learn how the nervous system processes information from the senses and how the brain creates perception, how brain imaging and advances in biochemistry are deepening the understanding of the emotional brain, and how the highly developed neocortex allows humans to make plans and predictions as well as engage in symbolic thought. Visitors will also learn how the brain's plasticity allows changes at different stages of life and how 21st century science can repair and improve the brain. Throughout the exhibition, challenge your brain with interactive puzzles and games that probe neural connections and pathways. Gallery 3, third floorBrain: The Inside Story is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with Codice. Idee per la cultura, Torino, Italy in association with Comune di Milano - Assessorato Cultura, Italy; Guangdong Science Center, Guangzhou, China; and Parque de las Ciencias, Granada, Spain.Generous support for Brain: The Inside Story has been provided by the Eileen P. Bernard Exhibition Fund, Virginia Hearst Randt and Dana Randt, and Mary and David Solomon. Additional support for the Brain: The Inside Story and its related educational programming has been provided by Roche.Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings
January 25-July 17, 2011
Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings will feature over 60 selections from a special set of Tibetan medical paintings from the Museum's collection. These traditional scroll paintings are believed to be among only a handful in existence that illustrate medical knowledge and procedures, providing a unique and rich history of medicine in Tibet. Subjects include causes, diagnostic techniques, and treatments of illness as well as human anatomy. The nearly 8,000 extraordinarily detailed images, painted in vegetable and mineral dyes on canvas, were painstakingly reproduced by hand in the 1990s by Romio Shrestha, a Nepalese artist, and his students. The originals-whose fate is unknown-were commissioned by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and created between 1687 and 1703. Audubon Gallery, fourth floor The Museum is deeply grateful to Emily H. Fisher and John Alexander, whose vision and generosity supported the acquisition and conservation of this collection of Tibetan Medical Paintings.Body and Spirit is made possible by a very generous gift from the Estate of Marian O. Naumburg.Highway of An Empire: The Great Inca Road
October 17, 2009-September 2011
The vast Inca Empire owed its reach and power to an extensive and intricate network of roads. Linking forts, religious sites, and administrative centers from the Pacific coast to the Amazonian rainforest, Inca roads allowed armies and imperial officials to conquer and then control the largest empire in the Americas. In this series of stunning photos, 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 the diversity of landscape it crosses. IMAX Corridor, first floor Courtesy of Consulate General of Peru in New York.The presentation of Highway of an Empire at the American Museum of Natural History is made possible by the generosity of the Arthur Ross Foundation.IMAX AND LARGE-FORMAT FILMS, LeFrak IMAX Theater, first floorSea Rex
Through July 3, 2011
This stunning IMAX® film sheds light on the extraordinary prehistoric underwater world and its larger-than-life creatures, which, with their daunting size and natural ability for predation, ruled the seas 20 million years before dinosaurs roamed the earth. Moviegoers will meet Julie, an imaginative young woman, as she travels from a modern-day aquarium to the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Viewers will explore an amazing underwater universe inhabited by, among other animals, the powerful Liopleurodon, the long-necked Elasmosaurus, Ophthalmosaurus or "eye lizard," the ferocious Prognathodon, and the gigantic 75-foot Shonisaurus.Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World is distributed worldwide by 3D Entertainment Distribution. Tornado Alley
July 4, 2011-January 8, 2012
This thrilling IMAX® film takes viewers on an epic chase through the "severe-weather capital of the world." Narrated by Bill Paxton (Twister, Titanic), the film follows Storm Chasers star Sean Casey and the scientists of VORTEX2, the largest tornado-research project ever assembled, on separate missions to encounter one of Earth's most awe-inspiring events-the birth of a tornado. Whirling above the human drama are the storms themselves, magnificent forces of nature, revealed in breathtaking detail through the magic of the giant screen.Tornado Alley is a production of Giant Screen Films and Graphic Films.SPACE SHOW, Hayden Planetarium, Rose Center for Earth and SpaceJourney to the Stars
Journey to the Stars, the spectacular Hayden Planetarium Space Show, launches visitors through time and space to experience the life and death of the stars in our night sky. Travel 13 billion years into the past, when the first stars were born, and witness brilliant supernovas that sent new kinds of matter coursing through the universe, into the atoms of our bodies, and into the air we breathe. Visit the heart of the fiery Sun and glimpse its distant future as it transforms into a massive red giant. Tour familiar stellar formations, explore new celestial mysteries, and discover the fascinating, unfolding story that connects us all to the stars. Hayden Planetarium, Rose Center for Earth and SpaceProduced by the American Museum of Natural History, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the Hayden Planetarium.Journey to the Stars was developed by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; GOTO Inc., Tokyo, Japan; Papalote • Museo del Niño, Mexico City, Mexico; and Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.Journey to the Stars was created by the American Museum of Natural History, with the major support and partnership of NASA, Science Mission Directorate, Heliophysics Division.Made possible through the generous sponsorship of Lockheed Martin Corporation.And proudly sponsored by Accenture.Supercomputing resources provided by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, through the TeraGrid, a project of the National Science Foundation.ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH AND SPACE PROGRAMSOne Step Beyond
The American Museum of Natural History's popular One Step Beyond, an ongoing party series that features the biggest names in techno, electronica, and hip hop continues. Guests can get their groove on while cocktails keep the party going. Each ticket includes one pass to the Museum for future use.HAYDEN PLANETARIUM PROGRAMSAstronomy Live
The last Tuesday of every month, 6:30 pm
This monthly program offers an interactive tour of the universe and a view of the constantly changing night sky. Learn about what is visible in our nighttime sky with the brilliant stars of the Zeiss Mark IX star projector or travel beyond the farthest reaches of the observable universe with the world's largest cosmic atlas, assembled at the Hayden Planetarium. Go to amnh.org for monthly descriptions. Hayden Planetarium Space TheaterAstronomy Live programs are supported, in part, by the Schaffner Family.AMNH EXPEDITIONS
The Museum established AMNH Expeditions, the first museum educational travel program in the country, in 1953. For 57 years, AMNH Expeditions has presented educational travel programs that reflect the Museum's past and current areas of interest and exploration and enable travelers to embark on their own explorations of the world in the company of scientists, curators, and educators. Participation helps to support the Museum's mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate, through scientific research and education, knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe. Trip categories include Cruises, Expeditions, Family Programs, and Private Jets, Planes & Trains. More information on this and other educational travel opportunities available through AMNH Expeditions can be found at amnhexpeditions.org.MUSEUM INFORMATIONHours
The Museum is open daily, 10 am-5:45 pm.
The Museum is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.Space Show Hours
Journey to the Stars is shown every half hour Monday-Friday, 10:30 am-4:30 pm (first show on Wednesday begins at 11 am), and Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 am-5 pm.Admission
Suggested general admission, which supports the Museum's scientific and educational endeavors and includes 46 Museum halls and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, is $16 (adults) suggested, $12 (students/seniors) suggested, $9 (children) suggested. All prices are subject to change.The Museum offers discounted combination ticket prices that include suggested general admission plus special exhibitions, IMAX films, and Space Shows.
o Museum Supersaver includes all special exhibitions, IMAX film, and Space Show: $32 (adults), $24.50 (students/seniors), $20 (children)o Museum Plus One includes one special exhibition, IMAX film, or Space Show: $24 (adults), $18 (students/seniors), $14 (children)Visitors who wish to pay less than the suggested Museum admission and also purchase a ticket to attend a special exhibition, IMAX film, or Space Show may do so only on-site at the Museum. To the amount they wish to pay for general admission, they should add $20 (adults), $16.50 (students/seniors), or $11 (children) for a Space Show, special exhibition, or IMAX film.Public Information
For additional information, the public may call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum's website at amnh.org.
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