MYTHIC CREATURES AT AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Written by Eunice Mendoza Sunday, 29 August 2010 21:41

New York City - Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids traces the natural and cultural roots of some of the world’s most enduring mythological creatures from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and beyond. This amazing exhibition includes eye-popping models, paintings, and textiles, along with other cultural objects from around the world ranging from shadow puppets to Japanese armor that bring to light surprising similarities and differences in the ways people around the world have been inspired by nature to envision and depict these strange and wonderful creatures. “This exhibition extends the Museum’s traditional examinations of the natural world and human cultures to explore how nature fuels creativity in people around the world and across time, inspires fear or whimsy, and even influences belief systems,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History.

For many centuries, humans around the world have brought mythic creatures to life in stories, music, and works of art. Today these creatures, which were sometimes inspired by fossils or living animals, continue to delight us. The exhibition reveals the relationship between nature and legend throughout history from Pliny the Elder, who, in 77 c.e., asserted that mermaids were “no fabulous tale,” to the current sightings of Scotland’s renowned but unsubstantiated Loch Ness Monster.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with The Field Museum, Chicago; Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau-Ottawa; Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney; and Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta. Mythic Creatures is proudly supported by MetLife Foundation. On exhibition until January 6, 2008.

Exhibition highlights include: from the Museum’s own collection, the dragon from a Chinese imperial dragon robe that was cut out and appliquéd onto a silk wedding robe of the Nanai people of eastern Siberia; a 120-foot-long Chinese parade dragon, recently used in New York City’s Chinatown to perform the traditional dragon dance at the Lunar New Year; a “Feejee mermaid,” of the type made famous by showman P. T. Barnum, created by sewing the head and torso of a monkey to the tail of a fish; a Pegasus carousel sculpture; an 18^th-century German apothecary sign featuring a unicorn with an actual narwhal tusk for its horn; and four tremendous, “life-size” models of mythical creatures: a 17-foot-long dragon with a wingspan of over 19 feet; a 10-foot-long unicorn; an 11-foot-long Roc with large, sharp talons swooping above the heads of visitors with a wingspan of nearly 20 feet; a kraken, whose 12-foot-high tentacles appear to rise out of the floor of the exhibition as if surfacing from the sea; plus two actual life-size models—an over-6-foot-tall, extinct primate called Gigantopithecus; and the largest bird ever to have lived, the over-9-foot-tall, extinct Aepyornis.

Exhibition
Mythic Creatures is divided into an introduction and five sections:

• The Introduction welcomes visitors into the exhibition, where they come face-to-face with a magnificent model of a 17-foot-long dragon with a wingspan of over 19 feet. Perhaps the most famed of mythic creatures, dragons are found on land and in air and water, in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and are examined throughout the exhibition. In Asian tradition, benevolent dragons are said to dwell in the rivers, lakes, and seas—some are as small as silkworms and some fill the sky when they rise from the waters every spring, breathing clouds and sending rain to make farmers’ fields green.

• Creatures of Water examines the kraken, sea monsters, mermaids, and other beings that inhabit the depths of the open ocean and give form to some of water’s essential mysteries. These creatures arouse feelings of curiosity and hope, but also fear. When European explorers set out on voyages of discovery in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, sea monsters were a concern and frightening rumors ran rampant. Sailors’ tales were often the only first-hand information about ocean animals and stories ranged from accurate observations to honest mistakes to outright tall tales, with no way for even the most objective naturalist to separate fact from fiction. Mermaids in Europe, Africa, and the Americas all carry combs and mirrors and were thought to be beautiful, seductive, and dangerous—like the sea itself. These details were passed from Europe to Africa to the Americas as sailors and slaves spread mermaid images and stories of watery woman around the world. Also featured are Vodou banners from Haiti depicting the mermaid Lasirèn and an early 20th-century ship figurehead carved with a gilded mermaid.
  

• Creatures of Land features beings that walk the Earth. Many of these creatures appear to have body parts from ordinary animals combined in unusual ways. Some experts believe that the legends of the griffin, an extraordinary creature combining body parts of eagles and lions, originated in the sands of the Gobi Desert around 2,000 years ago when Scythian miners stumbled upon the fossil remains of the four-legged, beaked dinosaur Protoceratops. Artifacts featuring the griffin in this section include Greek coins and a griffin statuette from Egypt ca. 150 c.e. The enormous bones of mammoths, mastodons, and woolly rhinoceroses found by ancient Greeks may have inspired tales of giants, while bones of fossil drawf elephants might have inspired tales of the Cyclops. The large trunk opening in the center of a fossil dwarf elephant skull may have been misinterpreted as a massive, single eye-socket. Ape-men such as the yeti of Tibet and Bigfoot of North America walk on two legs but always seem to stay just out of sight. Scientists know of one massive ape that really did live long ago—on display is an imposing model of Gigantopithecus blacki, a very distant relative of humans that lived in southeast Asia for almost a million years, until about 300,000 years ago.

• Creatures of Air explores winged mythological creatures such as the Asian phoenix, a mythical bird that appears at times of peace or to announce the birth of a virtuous emperor, represented in a richly embroidered Chinese silk panel and a glazed clay “roof charm” that guarded roof tiles of many palaces and temples, and the Greek Sphinx, a terrible monster with a lion’s body, a woman’s head, and a fondness for riddles who guarded the gates to the ancient Greek city of Thebes. Seven hundred years ago, Arab traders told of a bird so huge it could lift an elephant into the sky; sailors said it lived on an island off the southern coast of Africa. In fact, the over-9-foot-tall bird Aepyornis now extinct, once lived on the island of Madagascar.

• The Dragons section rounds out the extensive examination of mythical creatures. These reptilian beasts with fabulous powers claim a mythic presence on at least three continents. In European stories dragons are powerful, wicked, and dangerous. Some nest in caves, guard stockpiles of treasure, and devour sheep or even young girls. The dragon has sometimes been feared in the Christian world as the image of evil. In many stories, a dragon dies by the sword of a brave and honorable hero, ending a furious battle between sin and virtue, darkness and light. The cast of a skull of a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) watches over the exit of the exhibition and illuminates how a creature 20,000 years old could have been taken as proof that dragons were real.

Exhibition Organization and National Tour

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with the following institutions to which the exhibition will travel after it closes in New York: The Field Museum, Chicago (March 21–September 1, 2008); Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau-Ottawa (May 14–September 20, 2009); Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney (December 20, 2009–May 23, 2010); and Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta (February 12–August 7, 2011).

Mythic Creatures on Museum Web Site?www.amnh.org

Online visitors can explore Mythic Creatures by going to the Museum’s home page, www.amnh.org, and clicking the link in the “On Exhibit” area. The Web site www.amnh.org/mythic creatures features interviews with Dr. Norell, Dr. Kendell, and Mr. Ellis, photographs of some of the extraordinary exhibition highlights on view, fascinating facts and myths about the creatures in the exhibition, listings of exhibition-related public programs at the Museum.

American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures and the natural world through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions. The Museum accomplishes this ambitious goal through its extensive facilities and resources. The institution houses 46 permanent exhibition halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories, one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere, and a permanent collection of more than 30 million specimens and cultural artifacts. With a scientific staff of more than 200, the Museum supports research divisions in Anthropology, Paleontology, Invertebrate and Vertebrate Zoology, and the Physical Sciences. The Museum shares its treasures and discoveries with approximately four million on-site visitors from around the world each year. AMNH-produced exhibitions and Space Shows can currently be seen in venues on five continents reaching an audience of millions. In addition, the Museum’s Web site, www.amnh.org, extends its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond the Museum’s walls.