Arms and the dinosaur

Wandering around in the American Museum of Natural History today, I was struck how many of the intelligent and well-meaning new exhibits, such as the “Hall of Biodiversity”, sail way over the heads of children. Kids will put up with that kind of stuff, because their parents take them there and seem to think it’s all very important. But of course that’s not why the kids came to the museum.

They came to see the dinosaurs.

Yes, yes, they know there are also prehistoric wooly mammals, stuffed wildebeests, skeletons of extinct fish and dioramas that lovingly recreate the appearance of prehistoric grassy plains. There are minerals that glow in the dark, exotic trees and weird turtles and insects. And there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. But none of them are dinosaurs.

As I started to think about the love affair kids have with dinosaurs, I suddenly found myself thinking about another big museum – one directly across Central Park – the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The placement of these two monuments to civilization directly across from each other could not be mere happenstance. These twin pillars of celebration – of our knowledge of the natural world on the one hand, and our human striving to create a world of artistic expression on the other – are two sides of the same coin. They bracket our belief in ourselves as a civilization that seeks to spiral ever upward in some psychic journey through time.

But more than that, as a civilization that strives to make this upward spiral understandable and accessible to its citizenry – beginning with that citizenry’s children. And that is why museums do something to make themselves kid-friendly, to contain exhibits that invite family outings, no matter how arcane and difficult might be some of their other offerings. And as I thought about this, I started thinking about what, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the equivalent of the dinosaurs. What is the artistic cousin of the might thunder lizard?

The answer, of course, is Arms and Armor. This is the name of one long hall at the Met which is an absolute dream to any little kid who is not quite ready to accept the dreary view of reality held by most grownups. Your children might not give a fig about early American interiors, Rodin’s caryatids, Leonardo’s sketches, or anything at all by Joshua Reynolds, but put an authentic suit of armor on a store-dummy knight riding a statue of a horse, and kids are there. Lances, broadswords, sabers, longbows, crossbows, helmets, breastplates, chain mail, and the like – these are a child’s equivalent of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops. Even the horses wear cool armor, lovingly made by medieval craftsmen to match the marshal finery of the battling lords who rode them into battle.

Dinosaurs and knights in armor have several things in common. For one thing, they both happened a long time ago, far away from the day-to-day world of parents and teachers, in a time that may as well come from a dream. In addition, they are both larger than life – fearsome, fearless, concerned with raw power and the primal stuff of survival, inhabiting a world where a well placed swipe from powerful spiked tail or the practiced swing of a broadsword can mean the difference between glory and sudden death.

To a child, this is all very cool.

Thinking about it in pure marketing terms, I guess the ultimate kid-friendly museum would somehow combine these powerful totems of childhood veneration. Perhaps some far-seeing soul will eventually put it all together, and we will get the museum that every child secretly wishes for – dinosaurs in armor! While we’re at it, we could throw in the rest of the great child-friendly subjects – pirates and ancient egypt. Sooner or later it’s bound to happen, a museum devoted entirely to the battle for world domination between armored dinosaurs and ancient egyptian mummy pirates on the high seas.

Or maybe it will be dinosaur pirates versus ancient egyptian knights in armor. I really couldn’t say. I suppose to be safe we might as well put it all together and establish a museum that teaches of the mighty adventures of ancient egyptian pirate dinosaur knights in armor.

I’m sure it would be very popular.

5 thoughts on “Arms and the dinosaur”

  1. The mighty adventures of ancient egyptian pirate dinosaur knights in armor – flying space ships 😀

    Of course that’s only true for (most) boys and leaves out the girls. Probably both the girls and the girlies (yes, I do make a distinction there).

    Cheers,
    Mike

  2. Yes yes, of course, that’s much better: The mighty adventures of ancient alien egyptian pirate dinosaur knights in armor, preferably from the future.

    If that is too boy-centric, then what might be an equivalent for girls?

  3. Thanks Dagmar. That’s what I would have thought. But now I know better, from earlier blog experience, than to volunteer such thoughts without a genuine female backing me up. 🙂

  4. LOL – I know what you mean.
    You end up pretty fast as “one of those men who understand women” and well, that is not really a compliment at times.
    It’s my pleasure to lend you a hand. 🙂

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