Natural and cultural history preview

[eve_prime]

I went down to see the open house of the UO Museum of Natural History, which is now the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. They're renovating and will reopen in February. Unlike the art museum (also under renovation), though, this was rather disappointing. Back when I was in high school, the natural history museum was basically a basement in one of the science buildings with displays about the large mammals, like the giant rhinocerous, that lived in Oregon in the Quaternary period. It doesn't seem much more worthwhile now -- all they had to show today were four newly painted murals of Indians in various ecosystems and some of those 10,000-year-old sandals ("the oldest shoes in the world," aka "Oregon's oldest running shoes" in a Nike ad). I did do a bit of shopping in the museum store (I can't resist museum stores), and got The Ecological Indian: Myth and History by Shepard Krech III, which deromanticizes how native people interacted with the land.

Much, much better natural history museums:

• The Royal British Columbia Museum" -- esp. the First People's Gallery, including a replica of a Bighouse, some fantastic carved canoes, and a fine collection of the works of Haida artist Bill Reid


• The Oakland Museum -- esp. the Hall of California Ecology with dioramas of all the state's ecosystems

Here's a very striking tree on University Street: