When Whales Walked Explained at AMNH

Posted on December 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Whales exhibit tells the evolution story. Courtesy: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Right inside the exhibit, Whales: Giants of the Deep, the American Museum of Natural History answers two questions that have stumped centuries of nature lovers – how did the world’s largest sea-loving mammals ever evolve from land animals, and who are their closest relatives?

In the last 20 years, DNA experts and paleontologists have been hacking away at these questions, and the show provides some startling visuals and answers: Whales (a group that includes dolphins and porpoises) came from four-legged animals that hovered close to shore lines, snapping up fish. Oh, and their closest relatives on the Mammal Tree of Life are…get ready…hippos. See the show before January 5.

Clue to solving the mystery – the skull of Andrewsarchus, three feet long, found in 1923 by Kan Chuen Pao on AMNH’s second Gobi expedition. Courtesy: AMNH/R. Mickens

The first thing you’ll see is a massive skull of Andrewsarchus, a 45-million-year-old whale cousin, who would have stood over six feet tall at the shoulder. He was found in Mongolia on the famous AMNH Central Asiatic Expedition in the 1920s (remember the dinosaur eggs?) and to this day is the only one found.

The paleo team compared the features on his skull to other mammals, ran their analysis through cladistics software, generated a family tree, and learned that Andrewsarchus falls somewhere near the evolutionary point where whales and hippos had a common ancestor, a key clue.

Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Pakicetus, the oldest known ancestor to whales

A huge discovery in Northern Pakistan in 1983 began to unlock the rest of the mystery. Found in 50-million-year-old Eocene rocks, remains of the enigmatic, four-legged, fish-eating Pakicetus were discovered at the edge of what was once an ancient sea. It was deemed by scientists to be the earliest known modern-whale ancestor. Many specimens were unearthed, with ear bones looking like modern-day dolphins, but ankle bones more like a pig’s, giving scientists a reason to place his ancestry in the “artiodactyl” category, which includes hippos, pigs, antelopes, camels, and other even-toed hoofed animals. Subsequent finds and DNA analysis of modern whales further solidified the hippo-relation hypothesis.

Cladogram showing family relationships of whales and artiodactyls from the AMNH guide for students in grades 6-8

The show includes a full replica of his skeleton, along with other fossils from the subcontinent showing the transition of four-legged wolf-sized animals to the streamlined bodies that we now associate with ocean- and river-going cetaceans. You’ll see a terrific video that animates the transition from longer-snouted, web-footed fish-eaters that paddled through estuaries (Ambulocetus), to more streamlined sea-going mammals whose front legs became flippers and back legs disappeared nearly completely. Kutchicetus (43-46 million years ago) shows evidence that it probably did some deep dives, and Durudon (37 mya) had nostrils at the top of his head, flipper-hands, and apparatus at the end of his tail that suggests a support for flukes.

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, dweller in ancient tropical seas

A clue from India. Artist Carl Buell’s depiction of Kutchicetus, who lived in ancient tropical seas

The show was originally organized by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and features a mix of AMNH and Te Papa artifacts and insights.

There are many other wonderful biological, historical, and cultural details to the whale story, as the YouTube below shows (84K hits and counting), but shout-outs must be given to the two stars — large Sperm whale skeletons (think Moby Dick) on display, lovingly named and transported here by the Maoris, who found the stranded duo, prepared, and blessed them for special appearance in New York.

History Twist in Brooklyn’s Period Rooms

Posted on November 8, 2013 by MsSusanB

Hegarty’s “activation” of the Cane Acres Plantation dining room: Still Life with Peaches, Pear, Grapes and Crows; Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows; and Table Cloth with Fruit and Crows. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Hegarty’s “activation” of the Cane Acres Plantation dining room including Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum’s Period Rooms are again the focus of a rip-roaring, history-tearing, upside-down interpretation by an installation artist. Go before December 1 to see what’s happened to three rooms up on the museum’s Fourth Floor in Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories.

The dining room from the South Carolina’s Cane Acres Plantation is alive with dozen or so papier-mâché crows that are chowing down on the faux watermelons and peaches that you imagine to have been so beautifully arranged on the long, grand table.

Peering into either of the two plantation doorways, it’s disconcerting to see how the delicacies are being ripped apart and strewn about. The fruit literally pops out of the frames in this cross-referenced mash-up of Hitchcock terror, racial segregation issues, and classic still life painting.

Hegarty’s Pendleton carpet in the Cupola House parlor.

Hegarty’s Pendleton carpet is growing in the Cupola House parlor.

See how Hegarty created it all out of wire, glue, foil, foam, and everything else you can purchase at Michael’s on the Brooklyn Museum’s Flickr feed.

She was equally ambitious in two other rooms from the Cupola House, originally built in Edenton, North Carolina: The 1725 parlor room focuses on a visual “conversation” between General George Washington and Pawnee Chief Sharitarish, featuring a Native American-style Pendleton parlor rug that is “growing” grass, flowers, and roots to make you think about what happened to the native culture over the last few centuries.

She kicks the Manifest Destiny discussion right where it hurts in the Cupola House “hall” (where guests socialized) by letting two Pileated and Downy Woodpeckers have their way with everything valuable in the room, including (a reproduction of) Thomas Cole’s 1846 painting The Pic-Nic. Nature is getting out of hand.

The Downey Woodpeckers take over the Cupola House hall. Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Get over to Brooklyn and encounter a new twist on what you were taught in grade school history, but watch out for Hegarty’s flying bullets and birds.

Go Underground and Outside at Grand Central

Posted on October 25, 2013 by MsSusanB

Hiroyuki Suzuki’s dramatic black-and-white view of the massive $8.2B project

See New York above and below in two unique photography installations at everyone’s favorite train station right now.

At the New York Transit Museum Annex, you can glimpse your future path to the Hamptons in The Next Level: East Side Access Photographs by Hiroyuki Suzuki through October 27. Suzuki takes you over 14 stories below Grand Central to see the tunnels, sandhogs, tunnel boring machines, and chasms of the huge construction project that will allow 160,000 daily LIRR riders to arrive on Manhattan’s East Side when it’s done in 2019.

Suzuki had never before visited New York before starting his project, but he considers it a thank-you for the relief work done by the US Armed Services following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit his home country of Japan in 2011.

Underground view of East Side Access by Hiroyuki Suzuki

Contemplating the more than 50 black-and-white images, you can feel the monumental achievement happening underground, feel the damp, hear the light sloshing of men and machines moving through slightly damp tunnels, and see the miles of spaghetti-like cables illuminating the gigantic spaces where trains will soon thunder.

Suzuki made four trips down there during the project, and you may not even get to make one, so drop in and take a look at the engineering marvel happening right beneath a good patch of Midtown East. You’ll see supports labeled “48 Street” or “FDR” for orientation in the black wilderness.

Beautiful Hudson River photograph by Robert Rodriguez, Jr. from the one-day exhibition in Vanderbilt Hall

Speaking of wilderness, get over to Vanderbilt Hall sometime today to experience the opposite – gorgeous landscapes of the spectacular Hudson Valley. To celebrate the achievements of an historic environmental organization (and encourage you to buy a train ticket to see scenery that inspired generations of artists), there’s a one-day-only photo spectacular — 150 images by Annie Leibovitz and 12 other photographers whose subject is the beauty of the Hudson River.

On Time and Place: Celebrating Scenic Hudson’s 50 Years, sponsored by Metro-North and Scenic Hudson, has traveled to five cities to celebrate this historic environmental organization’s 50 years of success. The photos are in Vanderbilt Hall from 10am until 4pm.

Rich & Famous at Green-Wood’s 175th Anniversary

Posted on October 11, 2013 by MsSusanB

Show entrance featuring Green-Wood’s spectacular Gothic architecture.

It’s big, green, historic, beautiful, and has more celebrities inside than you could ever imagine possible in an out-of-the-way spot in Brooklyn. Any day of the week, you can take a trip out to the lush woodlands, hills, and statuary gardens of Green-Wood Cemetery (and you should!), but every NYC history geek needs to visit the Museum of the City of New York’s A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery before October 13 to plumb the riches that have been assembled to celebrate its 175-year history.

We’re providing a walk-through on our Flickr feed, but the virtual experience is no match for the first-hand encounters with objects associated with the New York titans that are interred within the 478 acres of hills and countryside of Green-Wood itself – Tiffany, Duncan Phyfe, Boss Tweed, and even The Little Drummer Boy.

The floor map and vitrines with items associated with Green-wood’s most famous

Consider the retail giants and brands: All five Brooks Brothers (who invented ready-made suits in 1849), the six Steinways who made pianos in Queens, Ebhard Faber (remember pencils?), the Domino Sugar owners (who once had 98% of the entire US market and who gave most of their vast art collection to the Met), the creator of Chiclets, the founder of Pan Am, and even F.A.O. Schwartz (yes, it’s a person).

MCNY has put the map of Green-wood on the floor of the gallery and has placed vitrines with objects associated with the rich and famous sort-of where they would be in the actual cemetery. Walking through the show is like random-access memory. You don’t know what or who you’ll stumble upon.

The tribute includes artists (from Currier & Ives and Asher Durand to Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, and Jean-Michel Basquiat); composers (Frank Ebb, Mr. Bernstein, and disco legend Paul Jibara); and inventors of things like the safety razor, the sewing machine, soda fountains, and the safety pin (think about that). Yes, it all happened in New York.

Spanish-language poster for “The Wizard of Oz” as a tribute to Frank Morgan, who played The Wizard

Green-wood is New York’s equivalent of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, full of vistas, trees, paths, lakes, works by celebrity sculptors, military memorials, and elaborate, ornate above-ground tombs. Lachaise spawned an international mania for sylvan-glade cemeteries when it opened in 1804, and when Mr. Pierrepont was laying out the Brooklyn street system in the early 1800s, he left a big, open green spot in the plan, where Green-Wood is today. It opened in 1838, predating Central Park, and grew into the No. 2 tourist attraction in the United States (after Niagara) by the 1850s.

An 1875 Howe Sewing Machine by the inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe.

The show’s front hall has spectacular landscape photos taken last year by Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, serving as luring calling cards to take the actual expedition to Green-Wood and its celebrated trolley tours led by uber-historian Jeff Richman.

Find Lightness of Being at City Hall

Posted on October 7, 2013 by MsSusanB

Alicja Kwade’s bicycle sculpture, Journey without arrival (Ralegh), 2012/2013

No, it’s not the mayoral race. As long as the nice weather holds up, get down to City Hall Park and poke around among the trees and plaza to see the whimsical sculpture that the Public Art Fund has on display in Lightness of Being. There’s plenty of time before the show closes December 13.

Take a look at what you can find on our Flickr feed.

Everyone will have their own favorites, but you’ll have to look closely to catch some of the work, since you can easily walk by and not notice – David Shrigley’s nearly hidden Metal Flip Flops near the fountain and Alicja Kwade’s delightfully twisted bicycle sculpture that’s hopefully not how your Citibike is going to end up. People walk right by them and then do a double-take.

At the foot of the park, Dalniel Buren’s Suncatcher functions more like an impromptu stage for fun-loving toddlers, but the true stars of the show are the six fantasty characters holding court nearby.

Buzzing it Down, 2012, by UK artist Gary Webb

Get out your cameras for Olaf Breuning’s installation, The Humans. They’re some of the craziest marble statues you’ll ever meet, forming a circle to evoke the human evolution from “fish” to “fisher king.” Enjoy the contrast they make to the Park’s other, more traditional marbled details.

Poke around behind Nathan Hale to see Franz West’s whimsical forest of bulbous growths, and don’t miss the super-intriguing sculpture by James Angus. He’s made a full-scale John Deere tractor in steel and cast iron, but instead of being a faithful reproduction, he stretched it digitally and left it toppled among the trees near Broadway. It makes you think back to the pre-industrial 1660s when this land was used as a livestock pasture, and reflect on where agriculture is today.

One of six fantasy characters in Olaf Bruening’s installation, The Humans, 2007.

One of six fantasy characters you’ll meet in Olaf Bruening’s The Humans, 2007.

The show will delight, make you think, and turn you into an urban explorer probing the nooks and crannies of the southern portion of the park’s nine acres.

And if you take your camera and get any good shots, you can contribute them to the Gallery on the Pubic Art Fund’s site.

Water, Water Everywhere at the Academy

Posted on September 7, 2013 by MsSusanB

Tintagel, 1881. Large, masterful watercolor depicting castle ruins on the Cornwall coast of England, which Richards associated with the legends of King Arthur.

Tintagel, 1881. Large, masterful watercolor by William Trost Richards depicting castle ruins on the Cornwall coast of England, which Richards associated with the legends of King Arthur. Who needs to mess with oil paint and build big canvases when you can do this with water and paper?

In a brilliant pairing, the National Academy Museum has mounted dual shows by artists who draw their greatest inspiration from water. There’s no need for a trip out of town to experience crashing waves, monumental waterfalls, and wide expanses of sea and sky done by one of America’s greatest watercolorists of all time and a celebrated 21^st century painter.

William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea features 60 works from the Academy’s collection – early graphite sketches, oil paintings, and beautiful, grand, sweeping watercolor vistas that are some of the tiniest, most meticulous works you’ll see anywhere. Some are on display for the first time, which is remarkable considering that critics believe WTR to be among the greatest American landscape painters of the 19^th century.

Seascape (1875), a watercolor on cream paper that’s only 9 X 14 inches. Source: National Academy

Seascape (1875), a tiny but monumental watercolor by William Trost Richards on cream paper. It’s only 9 X 14 inches. Source: National Academy

Inspired by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites early in his career, WTR began documenting the intricacies of the Wissahickon River paths near Germantown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. He soon became part of the American watercolor movement that began making works that were just as grand, romantic, and full of transcendence as anything by Church or Bierstadt. Quite a feat, when you’re working on such a tiny scale.

He spent years perfecting vistas of the ocean and sky from his home near Newport and on travels to the edges of the British Isles. Remarkably, he kept the horizon low to showcase the sky, all meticulously painted and built up from a ground of blue-gray wove paper. It’s remarkable how he evokes mood, rocks, night, dusk, and pale sky from that gray. Click here for more.

Steir’s monumental Blue River (2005) – one of her celebrated Waterfall series. Steir’s monumental Blue River (2005) – one of her celebrated Waterfall series. The video shows its true scale.

Pat Steir’s paintings, on the other hand, feature an opposite approach. Like Sam Francis or early post-Pop color-field painters, she pours, splatters, and drips her paint across canvases that seem a mile high and a block long. The masterwork on display at the Academy is Blue River, a virtual waterfall that’s just as mesmerizing as any of WTR’s watercolors, but done in bold, wide strokes on a larger-than-life canvas.

Go this weekend and delight in the masterful scenery. Pat herself indulges in the joy right here.

If you miss the Academy show, be sure to look for Pat’s Everlasting Waterfall hanging on the Fifth Floor of the Brooklyn Museum right next to Church.

Civil War Photos and High Line

Posted on September 1, 2013 by MsSusanB

The High Bridge and the former Civil War rail line, now turned into a pedestrian walking trail across the Appomattox River last year by the State of Virginia.

What can you see from the perspective of 150 years after Gettysburg? If you go to Farmville, Virginia, you can experience a tranquil, soaring view of lush greenery 160 feet above the Appomattox River – a railroad trestle that was once burned, chopped, and torn apart in desperation just a few days before Lee’s surrender.

If you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today or tomorrow, you can see Photography and the American Civil War, a show on the First Floor that snaps you back to the birth of image-making, self-promotion, and day-to-day documentation in a way that makes today’s mania for image-sharing look a little lame in comparison.

Essentially, there were over 2,000 photographers roaming through the North and South during those four years of the Civil War. They produced over 1 million pictures of people, soldiers, current/former slaves, battlefield encampments, and more. Photographers trailed the troops everywhere they went, setting up tented studios on site.

Half of Timothy O’Sullivan’s stereo photo, Farmville, Va. April 1865, High Bridge of the South Side Railroad across the Appomattox. Source: Library of Congress

As soon as you walk into the tented galleries, you’ll see a dizzying array of new technology and firsts – the first campaign button (Lincoln’s) using photos, the carte de visite mass marketed by Sojourner Truth to raise funds and promote her many social-change initiatives (check it out), stereo photos, albumen silver prints from glass negatives, Matthew Brady’s Union Square photo studio for the rich and famous, and before-and-after panoramas of what was going on at the front (not easy when the medium does not capture motion). But that’s just the first two rooms, so plan about an hour or more for the rest of the show.

Timothy O’Sullivan’s 1865 photograph, High Bridge, Appomattox, Va. from Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War [c1866] Source: Library of Congress

The photos from this week’s walk across the High Bridge in central Virginia is in stark contrast to the Library of Congress photos of the site in 1865, just after the war ended – a ground-up view of the famous rail bridge that was part of the historic photo-tome produced and marketed to the wealthy by Alexander Gardner and a stereo view of same, produced for the 3-D mass market. See and compare more views of Virginia’s Civil War “high line” with our Flickr photos.

There’s a lot more to the Met’s show than it’s possible to write about here (like the original $100K reward poster for Booth that was the first time photos were used in a perp search) and the fact that Brady never actually went to a battlefield (he sent others).

Matthew Brady’s 1860s studio camera is part of the Met’s show. Source: Lowenthell Family Photography Collection.

It’s simply one of the best shows that the Met has mounted, and congratulations to curator Jeff Rosenheim for this triumph. He’s written a great blog post and recorded a nice 30-minute video that sums up a lot of his thinking.

Check it out and if you’ve missed it, get your Amtrak ticket and head South: This mind-bending, must-see show is coming to the Gibbes Museum, Charleston, South Carolina (September 27, 2013–January 5, 2014), and the New Orleans Museum of Art (January 31–May 4, 2014).

Anxious, Turbulent Skies in Masterful Landscapes

Posted on August 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

Frederic Edwin Church’s depiction of the volcanic eruption in Ecuador -- Cotopaxi, painted in 1862 and exhibited the following year. Source: Detroit Institute of Arts.

Frederic Edwin Church’s depiction of the volcanic eruption in Ecuador — Cotopaxi, painted in 1862 and shown the following year. Source: Detroit Institute of Arts.

Who expects that gigantic, bold 18^th-century people-free landscapes by Bierstadt and Church to bear the heft of telling the anxious backstory of America before, during, and after the Civil War?

It’s true. Big landscapes are the booknds to the dramatic story told by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s exhibition to honor the 150^th anniversary of Gettysburg, American Painting and the Civil War, installed through September 2 on the upper and lower levels of the Met’s Lehman Wing.

Seeing the stunning upper-gallery works within the context of America’s troubled times is a must. You’ll never look again at a Bierstadt or Church again without checking its date to see if it was painted in the 1859-1865 range.

Sanford R. Giffins’s 1863 oil, A Coming Storm, says it all. Retouched by the artist in 1880. Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Hear Smithsonian curator Eleanor Jones Harvey’s three-minute introduction to how these magnificent landscapes became the “emotional barometer” of the country and what approach genre painters took in the midst of changing times. Then, check out the Smithsonian’s nice timeline and click on Church’s Meteor of 1860 and Our Banner in the Sky from 1861 to see what was in the news while these were being created in the studio.

You’ll find Sanford Gilfford’s A Coming Storm (1863) in the timeline in 1865. Ironically, this was owned by Shakespearean superstar Edwin Booth right after it was painted, but before his brother actor John Wilkes changed history and trashed the family name. When Melville saw the painting in a New York gallery a few weeks later in April 1865, he felt the tragic irony so profoundly that he had to write a poem to process it all.

Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, exhibited in 1865, one year after Lincoln signed legislation declaring this a public reserve. Source: Birmingham Museum of Art.

Church, Homer, and Gifford also painted camp life during the War, and those up-close-and-personal works are also featured in the show, alongside very precise oils of Confederate encampments by Conrad Wise Chapman. Thanks to Richmond’s Museum of the Confederacy, which loaned the works by Chapman, you’ll get to see the famous experimental submarine, The Hunley as it was in 1863. The submersible was raised from the depths near Charleston in 2000 with the tar bucket you’ll see in Chapman’s oil painting

But back to the giant landscape that closes the show upstairs. Bierstadt paid someone to take his place in the Union Army, so maybe that’s why his mind was free concentrate on more placid, ethereal works, such as the show’s finale, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California of 1865 – a immersive look into the California Eden that Lincoln’s signature in 1864 preserved as public land and away from scarred landscapes of the battlefield states.

What’s the connection between Arctic exploration and unusual nighttime phenomenon of 1864? Watch this video to see how Church used them to convey the mood of the country through his powerful, gigantic, beautiful Aurora Borealis.

See a slide show of 34 paintings in the show and access the full set of video podcasts on the Smithsonian’s web site.

Unicorn Natural History

Posted on August 19, 2013 by MsSusanB

Detail from The Unicorn Defends Itself (1495-1505), a large tapestry in the main gallery.

Who says unicorns aren’t real? Mr. Rockefeller’s tapestry unicorns have been the celebrity draw for the last 75 years uptown at The Cloisters, and are the cavorting centerpieces of the show, Search for the Unicorn. But it took some brave curators to finally display all the unicorn-themed stuff in the Met’s collection and truly reveal the place this beloved icon has held in science, medicine, and art for the last 2,000 years.

The small micro-show in the Romanesque gallery just inside the entrance presents ivory coffers, playing cards, etchings, a carved-bone parade saddle, and coats of arms featuring unicorns in all manner of activity.

But the surprises are loans from NYPL and the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda showing the unicorn’s inclusion in scientific texts, which attest to sightings and miracle cures from the impressive cloven-hoofed trotter.

Pome’s 1694 identification of species in General History of Drugs. Courtesy: US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda.

Conrad Gesner’s Histories of the Animals (1551), the most popular natural history book during the Renaissance, included the unicorn among its 1,200 woodcut images of the world’s quadrupeds. Gesner, who also published images of fossils for the first time here, was a stickler for documentation, and asserts that unicorns had been seen in Mecca by a reliable source. He wrote several pages about how to discern real from fake unicorn horns and told how it should be used to purify water, counteract poisons, and treat epilepsy.

General History of Drugs, which achieved global circulation after it was published in 1694, was written by Pierre Pome, the pharmacist to Louis XIV known for his expertise in medicines and treatments from exotic cultures. Pome gave unicorns their own chapter and described five species living in the Arabian desert and in proximity to the Red Sea. In Chapter 33, he correctly proclaimed “unicorn horn” to be narwhal tusk.

Narwahl tooth (a.k.a. unicorn horn). Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The narwhal’s gracefully shaped, unicorn-looking incisor tooth is given a place in the show, too. One from a private collector is in the Romanesque gallery alongside one of the tapestries, The Unicorn in Captivity (the one in the fenced-in pasture); the second stands behind glass opposite the rest of the tapestries in their usual gallery.

Fancied by rich and powerful in years gone by, Charlemagne, Suleyman the Magnificent, Charles VI of France, and Lorenzo de Medici all owned this Arctic collectible.

We couldn’t take photos inside the show, but don’t worry. The Met’s done a fantastic job documenting everything online, so take time to peruse all the items in the show. Then click on our Flickr site to see the famous Unicorn gallery and glimpse the Cloisters on a perfect summer day.

Do you have 13 minutes? If so, you’ll enjoy the hilarious introduction to the show by curator Barbara Drake Boehm and her speculation on why it took the Cloisters 75 years to mount a show on unicorns. The natural history of unicorns starts around 3:40, and she’ll take you through all the key library materials. Watch to the end to find out where the unicorn was last sighted in the 21^st century. It wasn’t Toys ‘R’ Us.

Last Call for Global Kitchen at AMNH

Posted on August 9, 2013 by MsSusanB

Japanese cube melon. Photo: AMNH/D. Finnin

Ever wonder what story is told by the food on your plate? It’s all explained in the show at the American Museum of Natural History, Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture, now in its final weekend.

It’s a fascinating walk-through of how food is produced, transported, and consumed by cultures all over the world. You’ll see examples of the zillions of varieties of potatoes archived by the Peruvians high up in the Andes and interesting twists like cube-shaped melons grown in Japan.

Diorama of the Aztec Tiatelolco market in 1519, just before the Conquistadors arrived. Photo: AMNH/R. Mickens

What’s everyone’s favorite part of the show? Most people can’t get enough of the interactive light table where you can watch the hands of master chefs making some incredible ethnic dishes and the Aztec market. The latter is a full-scale diorama of what shopping was like in 1519 down in Mexico City just before the conquistadors arrived. The market is vast, with an amazing array of items, all neatly arranged in sections, not unlike Eataly’s adventurous stalls near Madison Square.

You’ll get a glimpse of what was on the table of Gandhi, Roman royalty, the Great Khan, and other historic celebrities. The best is seeing what Otzi, the mummified Ice Man was packing as he crossed the Alps about 5,000 years ago.

Here’s the informative introductory video for this thought-provoking and mouth-watering show.

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