Manning Leonard Krull (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} manningkrull) wrote,@ 2008-03-17 20:59:00 |
|
| Entry tags: | museums, paris, photography, science, self-portrait, taxidermy |
La Grande Galerie de l'Évolution
This afternoon I joined my favorite American in Paris, Courtney (kocici), at the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, part of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Neither of us had ever been there before, but I'd read a bit about it here and there and I'd always heard that the place was very old and a little bit run-down and creepy. Turns out it is all of those things and more, and I really dug the vibe of the place...
No evolution museum would be complete without a caveman.
The building itself is beautiful, and the exhibits are reminiscent of earlier times; not much information is given about anything and you can tell the displays were designed a long time ago for people who'd probably never had the chance to see a dead elephant or a giraffe before (let alone a live one!); heavy on the spectacle and light on the science. The building is extremely dark, and I couldn't tell if this was in keeping with the original old-timey feel of the museum, or more to hide the fact that most of the dead animals' fur was falling out. Anyway, the poor lighting made photography pretty difficult, but here are a few of my feeble efforts anyway...
You can imagine that camel spends all day every day thinking about escaping down the whale's tail and right through the turnstiles...
Live human being for scale.
This is what the line at any post office in Paris looks like.
Some practical joker got the idea to hang a crocodile upside-down from the ceiling. Oldest trick in the book...
A typical carjacking in India.
All right, that's all well and good, but where's the part that says I came from a monkey so I can burn it down?
