How is a Raven like a Writing Desk?
Before taking this Natural History course I would have answered, without any hesitation, that they have nothing in common at all save the "r" sound at the beginning of each word. I would have not been wrong. A Raven has seemingly nothing in common with a Writing Desk, and yet the are both parts of Natural History, this connection is how they are similar.
In the Museum of Jurassic Technology one of the first displays one comes across is a display labeled "Audio Mimicry" which contains a brilliant green beetle mounted on a pole and a less brilliant green gemstone about the size of a dime mounted in much the same manner below it. Next to the glass display case that houses these two green curiosities are two red lights that alternate on and off as if to indicate which one is making the noise, and if one were to pick up the receiver just to the left of the alternating lights they would hear a buzzing that starts and stops every time the light changes with little to no differentiation between the buzzing sounds, despite the fact that one is a beetle and the other a gem stone.
After trying to puzzle out this display for several minutes I finally decided that this was one of those displays that asked the question, "How is a raven like a writing desk?" except instead of a raven and a desk it was a green beetle and a gemstone, the answer being they are both exhibited in a museum, any further pondering would have to be held for a later date.
As I wondered through the museum's collection of odds and ends it became increasingly obvious that this museum was not what I had grown up expecting a museum to be, it was more like the Hermitage Museum I had visited several summers prior in St. Petersberg, with odd bits and ends here and there; everything was there more for entertainment value than for actual knowledge, and everything was to be taken with a shaker of salt. The Museum of Jurassic Technology followed the logic that the function of a museum is to inspire curiosity just as its predecessor, the curiosity cabinet, did.
We then juxtaposed the Museum of Jurassic Technology against the LA Museum of Natural History. The LA Museum is exactly what I had grown up to expect from a museum, with facts and data conveniently laid in front of you while not distracting from the displays themselves, and seamlessly integrated into it. The dioramas supplied a wealth of information without saying much at all, taking the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words," to a new level. Writing around the displays was minimal letting the diorama itself do most of the work, and museum goers could with confidence state that all the facts displayed were as true to life as possible and had been meticulously checked over.
Before taking this course I would have taken this at face value: lion here, gazelle there, elephants and water buffaloes at the end of the hall. Our rude awakening at the beginning of the day at the MJC however made me a bit more skeptical leading me to examine the displays more in-depth than my usual cursory glance.
The lighting was artfully used to direct the viewers focus around the entirety of the display, and the more one looked the more one saw. A certain diorama of harbor seals contained more than what was on the placard: several seagulls swooped over head, a small seal pup had its head peeking out from behind its mother's bulk, unnoticeable unless one stepped closer, a small plover hanging out on a seaweed covered rock, and most surprisingly an abalone shell that, if I had not looked down, would have completely missed seeing altogether. Like in Yong's article I had to crane my neck to see this abalone shell, and I realized there was so much more in these dioramas than I had originally realized. The most interesting thing about the harbor seal diorama however was not in the physical display itself but in the background painting, most of the other diorama backgrounds consisted solely of landscapes, with perhaps a deer far far in the distance, but with the harbor seal there were several seals painted laying out on the beach among the rocks and a seagull flying just above the waves, this was out of character with all the other dioramas, and yet it fit right in. A perfect blend of art and science.
Yet I still wonder, how is a Raven like a Writing Desk?
Rackham, H., Jones, W. H. S., Eichholz, D. E. Pliny's Natural History. Harvard UP, Cambridge. 1954.
Yong, Ed. "Natural History Museums Are Teeming With Undiscovered Species". The Atlantic, February 08, 2016.
