Home decorating is a never ending process, which can be dreadful or exciting. We choose the latter. Summer is over and autumn is here. It’s the perfect season to cozy up your home into a museum style haven. Our Cabinet of Curiosities shop is the perfect place to start, or end. While you might […]
Disclaimer: This fictional story was written by Julia Russell in Youth Education Programs. Hello everyone, My name is Julia, and it’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since I started my research as a graduate student at HMNS. It really seems like it was just yesterday… I’ve loved museums since I was a […]
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool museophile (no, I did not just make that word up). I love to look at collections of amazing specimens and artifacts. Turns out I also love to hoard things — oh, I mean collect items of great interest and importance. I like to believe my propensity to collect is an adaptive instinct […]
In the first fan girl crush blog about Charles Willson Peale, I talked about how Peale created the first American Museum. Today, I’m talking about the rest of his life. Part of the reason I admire Peale so much is that his attitude about life seemed to be, “I can figure that out.” If he […]
Back in December, a 44-foot sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) washed ashore and died on the Galveston coastline near the Terramar subdivision. It was sighted by a passerby who spied it rolling in the waves, its spout the only clear sign that it was alive. A crowd gathered, including a local dolphin rescue group and machinery […]
I have two lives. At the Houston Museum of Natural Science, I’m a science blogger, but in my art life, I’m an aspiring novelist. Occasionally, I have the privilege of embarking on a literary pilgrimage to a city I’ve never been to, in the most recent case, Los Angeles, where I attended the AWP writer’s […]
I recently had the opportunity to travel to Philadelphia. Everyone else was hot and bothered to see the birthplace of American democracy. I was excited to see the science museums: The Franklin Institute, The Academy of Natural Science, The Mutter and Independence Hall. (You read right on that last one. Keep going…) Next month, April […]
One of the most photographed pieces in the museum’s collections is the “jaw dropping” crystal quartz skull in the exhibit Gemstone Carvings: Masterworks by Harold Van Pelt. The hollow, life-sized skull with articulated jaw, was carved from a single block of rare izoklakeite quartz. Our fascination with human skulls spans cultures and eras. From the […]
