Museum

 

When I was in fourth grade, I won a summer scholarship to classes at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

The museum was then located in a small building in the middle of the Houston Zoo, about where the tropical bird house is located now. I can’t imagine this happening today, but I would catch the bus in northwest Houston, and with two transfers along the way, ride to Hermann Park, south of downtown.  After spending the day at the museum and wandering around the zoo, I would take another three buses home.

The classes covered a wide range of subjects – biology, geology, paleontology, anthropology – taught by museum director Robert Vines. We  got to handle exhibits that were not on display, or were behind glass and out of reach to the average museum visitor. We actually got to hold dinosaur bones, live snakes and shrunken heads; nothing could be cooler for a nine-year-old boy.

The museum has come a long way since then, with several acres on the north end of Hermann Park, an astronomical observatory in Brazos Bend State Park, and a satellite museum in Sugar Land much bigger than the museum I attended in the 50’s.

Currently, they are putting the finishing touches on a huge new facility adjacent to the main museum – a four story building with display areas larger than a football field. It is scheduled to open to the public in June.