Markus Wright

Smithsonian Natural History Museum

May 10 2023

This virtual field trip was about a museum and different stuff in it. There were fossils

from extinct animals like dinosaurs and plants. There were also animals that are still

alive like giraffes, tigers, elephants and lions. There were bones of primates and

cavemen before us. They were lined up next to a current human skull structure for us to

see the progression that human civilization has gone through. There was one part of the

virtual field trip where there was a room full of animal skeletons like cats, hyenas, bears,

and racoons. They had descriptions of the animals and how they currently live or lived.

There was this one animal named a Civet. It was an animal that was weasel-like and

ate fish from the water. This animal lived in the days of the dinosaurs.

This museum trip interested me in a way because I've never heard of these old

animals like the civet before. The room with all the different human bones also

interested me. The primeape skeletons look similar to ours but also very different. They

were slouched with heads like gorillas. They walked on 4s and moved similar to

monkeys. It intrigues me that these animal-like people were able to evolve into us.

There was another part of the museum that interested me. This part was about

pharaohs and mummies. It shows some amazing items that the pharaohs made like

pots and little sphinx heads. There's also a part about how the dead pharaohs were

wrapped up and put in tombs. These tombs that were put in were beautiful with nice

little drawings on them and a big sphinx or pharaoh's head on it that may signify the

head of the dead person.

 NEWSELA: New exhibit reflects the changing perception of Indigenous art

By The Smithsonian Institution, adapted by Newsela staff on 01.30.20.

This article is about a man named Paul Chaat Smith. He works at the

Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He is working on a project

called “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Paintings”. This is a new exhibit

for paintings that highlights questions of where indigenous American art and artists truly

belong. Before, the Indigenous art was purposely separated from the rest of the art in

history. It was until American Meredith, an artist from a show, saw this divided group of

indigenous artists and other artists. Meredith includes indigenous woodland style in

everything. Kathleen Ash-Milby is a Indigenous American and says that this project is

reconsidering what American art is.