The evening of Sunday, September 2, 2018 marked the loss of one of the world’s largest natural history collections. A fire destroyed the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, and with the building, a collection of roughly 20 million artifacts, specimens and books went up in smoke. This is a devastating loss to the […]
Pictured above is a Campa Shaman’s hood, the fourth object to be discussed in our 5 Of The Most Magical Objects In Our Collection series ( click HERE to see the other blogs in the series). You may have noticed that the hood has the body parts of a number of birds and small animals sewn […]
by “Cretaceous” Chris Wells Brazil is a beautiful country, but not in the same way as the Florida Keys, Hawaii, or Aspen. Everywhere in Brazil you have a wonderful dichotomy between the grotesque and the graceful. The entire country is like an impressionist painting — up close you see sloppiness and imperfection, but if you […]
On Oct. 17, we celebrate International Archaeology Day. Last year, the Houston Museum of Natural Science participated on a large scale for the first time in a long time. This year, we will have our “Second Annual” version of the same. So what is archaeology and who are these characters that practice the art of […]
Think Brazil is all Carnival and beaches? Think again. Here are three things you probably didn’t know about Brazil: MERCHANTS NAMED IT, NOT COLONIAL POWERS When Portugal started to colonize Brazil, they named it Terra de Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross) in their official manuscripts. However, as sailors and merchants began to exploit […]
