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| Alamosaurus and T-Rex |
This is not the first time I've been to the Perot Museum and it is definitely not going to be my last. I think I've been at least three times so far, and each time I still get those wonderful butterflies of excitement in my tummy when I walk inside. Since the museum is so new, it still has that sparkle that hasn't been dulled over thousands and thousands of field trips that will eventually wear it all down.
Sadly, that's the state of most museums in the DFW area, especially Fort Worth. The museums have seen so much foot traffic and natural destruction of curious children that it starts to look extremely dated and defeated.
That's not the case with the Perot Museum. It's gorgeous. The exhibits are still shiny and exciting with new information and up to date displays and interactive games for the kids at every turn. They've done a great job keeping it very entertaining but also really alluring for adults. It doesn't feel overly children geared, and is unapologetic in it's clear cut facts about evolution and science.
Thus, Perot Museum has got to be one of my all time favorite places to visit.
The building itself is so hypnotically strange from the outside, so unique you can't help but fall in love right away. I'm not going to do this building description justice, but I can't help but describe it as a giant, gray mud hut with a slanted window falling down the side of it.
Hey, I warned you it was going to sound weird.
Here's what it looks like from the outside:
Weird, right?
It looks more like a modern art museum than a museum of natural history, and I'm sure this was absolutely on purpose. It wants to dray you in and surprise you with education.
I guess calling it an art museum isn't too far from the truth though, because the exhibits are set up like works of art. They are beautifully displayed and alluring, especially the Gem Hall, which is like walking through a hidden treasure vault.
The museum is made up of several floors with different exhibits on each one, but my absolute favorites are the Life: Then and Now (dinosaurs), Becoming Human, and the Gem Hall. All of them are fantastic, but I of course adore the dinosaur hall the most and love the fact that the top floor of the dinosaur exhibit is all about birds and lets you get close to the tall Alamosaurus face.
Amazingly realistic dinosaur skeleton replicas tower over the guests, frozen in mid action as fan-favorite t-rex stomps along side the breathtaking Alamosaurus who stretches high above the first floor. A massive pterosaur sores above with long skeleton wings spanning several feet while avicious Mosasur flanks the opposite wall.
A parade of other dinosaurs and far distant cousins surround the t-rex and Alamosaurus battle: hadrosaurs grazing calmly, raptors sprinting with claws displayed as they ready attack, and a Pachyrhinosaur mulls about towards the back.
Murals of these creatures in the flesh hang as testaments to how beautiful they would have been in life as well as in death, the backdrops to help fill the imagination.
Being Human is my next favorite, a perfect hall to visit right before Darwin Day even though this post isn't going live until after the 12th. I actually was at the museum on the 4th but haven't gotten around to write about it until now.
As a side note, totally unrelated to the post, I'm actually home sick from work with a mild cold. While it sucks I'm feeling like three-times-hammered dogshit, I was able to get my Darwin Day blog post finished and get this post going during my recovery time. I'm sitting on the couch listening to my dogs snoring and my husband playing Xcom, musing about the upcoming awesome events and my past visit to the museum.
Not a bad way to spend a sick day.
Walking into the Being Human hall is so dreamy. There are pillars of cubed pictures showing our clearly human skulls along side our almost human ancestors floating high above wax hyper realistic wax models of hominids and humans. A long white table height display is not far from these silent statues showing the always humbling diagrams of hand and arm bone similarities between all species. Outlines of a cat's arm is shown next to a bat's, a frogs beside a whales, and our wiggly fingers besides chimps.
A giant table displaying the entire tree of life is topped with magnifying glasses so you can read the incredibly small print of all the names around the massive family pinwheel, the jagged lines tracing back in fewer and fewer brackets until it reached the very middle in all its simplicity. A small red dot in the blur of names simply states "You are here".
Behind this table Darwin's own small paper doodle is displayed above the reality he inspired the great scientists after him to discover.
While I'm very much in love with the dinosaur hall, the Gem Hall is pure magic. Sparkling treasures rest behind panes of glass and under soft light, casting shimmers across the dim and haunting room. Natural precious gems in their raw form vying for attention beside the often more impressive cubed and otherworldly minerals.
It's hard not to lust after these remarkable treasures.
If the dinosaur exhibit is my true love, the Human Hall is my passion, then the Gem Hall is my incredibly guilty pleasure. I should know more about them than I do, especially as a fossil nerd and anthropology major, but honestly my geology skills are embarrassingly small. I remember bits and pieces from my geology II class from many years ago, but I never really kept up with it. I typically stuck with the biology, evolutionary or anatomy studies of things instead of the actual geology. Each time I visit the Gem Hall, it makes me want to take another geology class so I know what I'm reading.
But instead I go home and blog about my visit and read about other things for hours.
We also had a chance to visit the travelling exhibit all about Bio-Luminescent life. We weren't able to take pictures inside, so sadly I don't have any to share here. The whole room was dark with the displays lit up with models and information. Water effects rippled off the walls during the deep sea areas, which were my favorite, and showed the alien life that lives at the ocean floor. They had a display about the Vampire Squid, another favorite, and had some live luminescent fish in tanks we could peek into.
Of course, the fish were pretty tired from the boatload of kids who came in before us, but we got to see a little of their twinkling before we left.
I have seen three of the travelling exhibits including this one, and so far my favorite is still going to be the Animals Inside Out one from the very first visit.
Alex, my husband, surprised me by taking me to the Perot Museum a couple of years ago for this very freaky but amazing exhibit of real, skinned models of animals. It showed the muscles and inner workings of giraffes, goats, camels, and of course a couple humans were tossed in as well. It was all very well done and hauntingly mesmerizing. If I felt like digging through my Facebook to find the pictures I would, but instead I'm going to gracefully bow out of that and let you instead just enjoy the current pictures from the last visit.
While this wasn't my first time here, it was an amazing trip. Jess was with me of course, but my dear best friend Shen had never been before. I'm going to wager that the Gem Hall was her favorite, considering that she was having a mild panic attack over the beauty of some of the pieces there.
I cannot wait to be able to go back again and see my old favorite exhibits and whatever amazing travelling one they have to offer.
The museum also does Social Science nights on occasion, which hosts lectures and adult themed (not like...sexy time adult stuff, just with like alcohol and no kids) activities and drinks. One of these days I'll catch one and let you know how it goes. They tend to be on weekends and I am one of those not nine-to-five types, much to my dismay.
If you're in Texas and remotely close to Dallas, there is zero reason for you not to go check out this amazing museum. I'd suggest going in the week to avoid the crowds and catch one of the travelling exhibits, they're usually pretty damn cool.
- M
You can check out my full album of my visit on my Facebook here.
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