A Milwaukee Favorite

Yesterday, I went with Munchkinhead, Alfred and Nathy-Boo to the Milwaukee Public Museum.  We love the museum and have been going regularly since we were little.  Well, not Nathy-Boo, he's from Nebraska, not Milwaukee.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

We saw the traveling Titanic exhibit with real artifacts from the Titanic.  It was kinda freaky in some places, especially where it made it seem like we were under water.  When we entered the exhibit, we each got a card with a real passenger on it and at the end got to see if we survived or not.  I didn't; Nathy-Boo didn't; but Alfred and Munchkinhead did.

We also went to a planetarium show about the Christmas Star.  It was really interesting.  Before the movie, a guy comes out and does a planetarium show with stars on the IMAX dome.  I was super excited because Orion is currently visible late at night.  That's my favorite constellation and he isn't always visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

We all have our favorite parts of the museum.  I love the Streets of Old Milwaukee, though we got there 15 minutes after the little candy shop closed.  (That's ok though because St. Nick brought us Violets, Necco Waffers and popcorn balls!  And Mommy has clove and cinnamon ribbon candy already.)  Wendy loves the European Village,  which is currently decorated for the holidays, including the spinning Polish Christmas tree hanging high up in the town square.  (It's upside-down.)  Katrina loves seeing the monkeys, sloths and bats in the Rainforest.  Sadly, the Howler Monkey wasn't working. :(   (Those pics are from last year's visit.)

Other favorites include the T-Rex eating the Triceratops, the walk-in igloo and of course the movies: How to Dig a Hole To the Other Side of the World and the Dinosaurs movie. 

Another, recently fun addition to the museum is listening to Alfred tell us what's wrong with exhibits.  She is, as she put it when saying perhaps we shouldn't put our glasses on those skulls, an emerging museum professional.  She'll graduate in May with a masters in Museum-something-or-other.  I know she hates the errors in the 28 year old claymation dinosaur video, but what really irks her is the prehistoric mammal collection.  Apparently,  there isn't much right in that exhibit and it needs to be updated based on some "new" discoveries that were made in 1992.  She gets especially annoyed when they mess up things on the prehistoric rhinos and other creatures she knows a lot about.  Oh well, I still like the museum.  (Although, I'd like it better if the gift store still sold Astronaut ice cream!)

So what do you do at a museum you've gone to so often you notice when something's been moved?  Well, besides visiting all your favorite places, looking for what's changed, and, if your Wendy, pointing out what's wrong, you act out the exhibits!

Totem pole at the top of the now down (once up) escalator to the second floor.

 

Skulls at the entrance to Latin America.

 

Big bird catching a beaver in North America.

 

1950s Museum curator.

 

Mask, I think in Latin America exhibit.

 

Cactus.

 

Poor baby bear is being attacked by bees!