Museum Stories

By

For Longreads, Jaime Green writes about the narrative styles employed in exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. Green focuses on the work of one of the AMNH’s directors, Albert E. Parr, and his efforts to connect the science of the museum with the lives of its visitors:

Rather than showing one isolated capsule, the new hall would encompass nature and the human world…. The central theme would not be a certain animal, or even the landscape portrayed. Not one story but the fact that the stories are there. Parr, strongly influenced by the burgeoning field of ecology, believed that the interconnectedness between disciplines was the story of the world.


Michelle Vider is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Toast, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Atlas and Alice, Baldhip Magazine, and others. Find her at michellevider.com or @meanchelled. More from this author →