Can't find what you're looking for?
Try making your search term more general or browse around the links at the very top and very bottom of our website.
Search Results
Educator How-To: Make your own Dia de los Muertos altar out of Altoids tins
If you have been following along, you might have noted that Dia de los Muertos — Day of the Dead — is a favorite holiday for the Youth Education staffers. The Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico on Nov. 2. It is a time when Mexican families spend time at the cemetery, visiting the graves of their relatives, cleaning and perhaps painting the headstones, arranging flowers, especially flowers of the dead (marigolds) and lighting candles. It is also…
Behind the Scenes: Retablos Fit for an Icon
When you walk into the museum store, you may notice the elaborate display wall at the entrance. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look with our Creative Merchandising Director on how it all comes together.This season’s display is a tribute to Mexican arts and culture and features a life-sized retablo complete with a Catrina figurine. My inspiration were the detailed nichos, or retablos, that are such a central part of Latin American folk art. These retablos are usually under 12 or 18 inches…
Skulls, Horseshoes, Parrots and Robots: Fall Teacher Tuesdays offer awesome classroom ideas
It’s officially fall, and I’d like to say the weather is cooling down and the leaves are turning bright and beautiful colors, but we live in Houston. So… no.Instead, I can tell you that we've been hard at work this summer developing fun, fast and hands-on activities for this year’s ExxonMobil Teacher Tuesdays. For adults only, Teacher Tuesdays offer fun and interactive professional development opportunities for ideas to kick your lessons up a notch. We're pretty excited about the line-up this…
Discreet Hoarding: The Mystery of the Disappearing Horses and Cabinets of Curiosity
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 that has been exponentially amplified over millions of years of selective evolution. This impulse to collect benefited my ancestors because they were driven to collect…
Halloween How-to: Make a Spooky Skeleton Out of Recycled Milk Jugs!
Halloween requires skeletons. (And so does El Dia de los Muertos, for that matter...) If you're on a budget but like to decorate, or you're crazy about recycling, or you're the crafty type who loves to add custom flair to everything, or you just want to see if you can do it, we've got a project for you!Using recycled gallon and half-gallon milk jugs and some other simple materials, you can make your own reusable skeleton decoration to hang in…
The Art of the Skull: Museum Store highlights the beauty of the human skeleton
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 Neolithic plaster-covered skulls of Jericho, the ornate Buddhist kapala skull cups, European vanitas morality paintings, Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos festivals, and all the way up…