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[emelbe]

The Birds of the World Hall at the American Museum of Natural History is on the second floor sandwiched between the Mexico and Central America hall, the Stout Hall of Asian Peoples, and the African Peoples hall. A little incongruous with its surroundings. Like the Warburg Hall of New York State Environment, people tend to pass through it on their way to somewhere else or to consult their maps or to ogle a funny looking bird or two before moving on. I think this makes it a great place to recharge.

The hall has twelve dioramas and a eight or nine benches. I could (and do, given the opportunity) look at them for hours. They are like an inverse hall of impressionist masters. From a distance some of them look like they’re just plants and dirt and sky and maybe some water. The longer you look, the more you get your eyes on. The more you get your eyes on, the more you see.

You can’t see the entire exhibit in this frame so you can’t see all of them but this exhibit has fifty-one species from the Congo represented.

Some of them more than once.

There are more of them in the frame than you think.