Museums in Harvard Yard

Harvard University sprouts out lots of museums. We visited two more of them today: the Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Anthropology.

We wandered through Harvard Yard (pronounced Haahvaahd Yaahd), with my dad asking directions at least once, because that’s what he does. I’m timid about asking directions, and sometimes I think he overdoes it. I rather think my mother—and perhaps my grandparents before her—have instilled in him a belief that he’s completely and hopelessly incompetent, whether it’s about following directions or using computers or whatever.

I say the above even though my dad’s choice to ask directions of the right person led us to the Museum of Natural History. We took the steps into a big brick Victorian building. The Boston & Cambridge bus tour conveniently covered two days and included free admission to this museum—all we had to do is show our ticket at the admittance counter. In this museum, we wandered through a huge room full of pretty rocks—crystals, gold, amethyst, etc. Some were huge chunks in glass display cases along the walls, and others were small pieces in nineteenth-century wooden display cases lined up in the center of the room. In the midst of all this was a case displaying very large, pointy crystals sticking up…and looking like they came from Superman’s planet.

The other room we explored (and my dad wasn’t nearly as interested in this one) was full of glass flowers and plants crafted by a man and his son from 1886 to 1936. They were Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, and they made nearly 4,400 of these detailed, realistic, and life-size plant sculptures, entirely from glass. The original purpose of the glass sculptures was to teach botany at Harvard; until then, students only had access to crude papier-mache or wax imitation plants and flowers.

The Museum of Natural History was connected to the Peabody Museum of Anthropology. We didn’t have to go outside to enter it, and we didn’t have to pay for admission, because we’d already gotten into the other museum.

The Peabody Museum has exhibits pertaining to the culture of Mayan and Aztec people and other Native Americans, and of South American cultures. I was especially fascinated by the bright and colorful appliqued projects of the Kuna culture from Panama, and I’d like to make something similar.

I thought about what it must be like to be a student at such a university: you can visit so many amazing museums, without even setting foot off your college campus.