To celebrate Katie's completion of the LSAT on Saturday, Katie, Erin, Isaac, and I went to explore the National Geographic Museum on 17th and M Street. The National Geographic Museum is located one block from my office in Farragut Square, but I have never found the chance to check it out until now!
A $6 student admission ticket brought us first to a short film and an exhibit titled "1001 Inventions." This exhibit highlights a plethora of theories and inventions found in Muslim and Arabic areas of the world during the Dark Ages. Highlights of the exhibit included a flying game where you actually flapped your arms to fly through an obstacle course, a constellation matching game, building blocks, and tons of other interactive and informative displays on Muslim innovation. While the exhibit was clearly aimed at a younger audience, my group surprisingly had a lot of fun looking at the displays and fighting off small children for another turn at the flying game.
The second component of the museum was an exhibit on exotic birds of the world, focusing particularly in South America and New Guinea. Despite my paralyzing fear of being attacked by birds, I enjoyed seeing all of the unique (and stuffed) species stowed safely away behind glass cases. One of the most captivating components of the exhibit was a film on how National Geographic films these exotic species. The two men featured in the video discussed the months long process to just get one decent picture of a rare species. A beautiful bird photography display at the front of the exhibit was also worth spending time exploring.
Finally, if you are looking for a great gift shop the National Geographic Museum has one of the best I have ever seen. My group spent easily as much time looking through all of the books, gifts, videos, and photography in the gift shop as we did looking at the exhibits!
Overall, if you are looking for an interesting way to spend an hour or two (especially if you are with younger children) I would definitely recommend visiting the National Geographic Museum.
-Marissa Cooper
No comments:
Post a Comment