Harvard Museum of Natural History

Last weekend was the first weekend of the month and therefore Free Museum Weekend for those of us Bank of America credit cards. The Harvard Museum of Natural History is one of the Boston area museums that participates in the program which means that we only have to pay for Maura as both Jennifer and I have cards from BoA. Free Museum Weekend is probably my favorite credit card perk. Because we had not visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History recently and we were in the mood for a family outing we hopped on the Red Line Sunday afternoon and traveled to Harvard Square for a stroll across the Harvard University campus and a visit to the museum.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is a traditional museum with exhibits in glass cases. It has extensive collections illustrating vertebrate anatomy, botany and mineralogy as well as some mollusks and arthropods and an interesting collection of fossils. The collections were intended for research and for educating students but they are also a draw for the general public. The stuffed and mounted animals are probably the most popular exhibits but I find them a bit sad. Maura is sometimes bothered by the fumes from the preservatives that keep them in good shape.

My favorite collections in the museum are the glass flowers and the mineral collection. The glass flowers are reproductions of living plants in imperishable glass. They are both accurate and beautiful. I’m not much of an expert at botany so I find I learn more from the glass plants than I do from other exhibits but I also marvel at them. I’m not sure Maura has much interest in botany but she doesn’t mind looking at the flowers because they are works of art.

The minerals are also beautiful and fascinating. I’ve always had an interest in geology since I was a small child and it was one of my majors in college. I could probably stare at the mineral samples in the cases for hours, partly filling in gaps in my knowledge of minerals and partly reminiscing over college days. Maura likes minerals and I think she would love to collect them herself though she gets bored of them before I do and wanders to the edges of the room where multimedia presentations cover other aspects of Earth science. 

Connected to the Museum of Natural History is the Peabody Museum which houses Harvard’s ethnographic collections and archaeological collections from Mesoamerica and the United States. I find them interesting but I never get to spend as much time exploring them as I would like. We never get to the Peabody early in our visit and Maura doesn't enjoy them as much as I do. On this trip Jennifer and Maura left me to explore the Peabody Museum on my own for an hour or so while they went back to the Museum of Natural History. It was a good compromise. Maura was saved from boredom and I got to see some things I enjoyed that I would have missed otherwise.