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September 21, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Marvels from Ethiopia and China on view at HMNS

Marvels from Ethiopia and China on view at HMNS

By Rachel Carlson | For the Thresher

Unless you belong to that rare breed of zealous museum types, it is unlikely that the Human Museum of Natural Science ever crosses your radar screen. Rice students live in a city that contains more weekend opportunities than can fill even the most ambitious of admissions brochures. So when we do peek over the hedges, it is not usually to look for a “wild frogs” exhibit or collection of ancient wine pitchers.

Yet, there are certain grey, damp Saturday afternoons that whisper of a time when mini-Owls begged their mothers to take them to the giant T-Rex skeleton. On those days, it is time to give in to one’s inner-child — or artist, or wine pitcher enthusiast. It is time to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Two exhibits currently showing at the HMNS are well worth the five-minute walk from campus. Because Rice students can enter the exhibits for discounted prices, the showings are doubly worthwhile. “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia” is particularly renowned, featuring the ancient skeleton of Lucy, a hominid ancestor. The other, “Treasures from Shanghai,” offers a concise display of Chinese artistic history from the Neolithic Period to the Qing Dynasty.

Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia#

HMNS is the first museum outside of Ethiopia to host Lucy for public viewing, showing her until Apr. 20. But displaying AL 288-1, affectionately known as Lucy, must be a formidable task. She is a 3.2 million-year-old fossil, and the most complete hominid specimen of that time period. An exhibit must consist of many artifacts, but anything placed beside Lucy would seem trivial in comparison. Fortunately, curators at the HMNS decided on a tactful approach to this problem. Other artifacts in “Lucy’s Legacy” do not compete with Lucy; they introduce her.

“Lucy’s Legacy” summarizes Ethiopia’s past and present. The country is an archaeological goldmine, and a timeline near the beginning of the exhibit details some significant discoveries, taking visitors along a million-year journey back to their own heritage. The first sections display religious and cultural artifacts, such as manuscripts and paintings, paintings from ancient Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Aksum. These sacred relics lead to a series of skulls from early Homo sapiens, which then transitions to the final room. Here lies a central case with the bones of Australopithecus afarensis — Lucy.

The exhibit is remarkable not only for Lucy, but for the transitions that it describes. When visitors enter the exhibit, they see spiritual relics that reflect a hope to be more than human. But by the end, viewers realize the remarkableness of their mere humanity. “Lucy’s Legacy” is, in fact, the reminder that each human may be a person or soul, but also a remarkable animal.

Treasures from Shanghai

For an attempt to condense 5,000 years of art and culture into a one-room display, “Treasures from Shanghai,” on view until Jan. 6, is impressive. HMNS cooperated with the Shanghai Museum to bring over 70 artifacts from the dynasties of ancient China. The exhibit focuses on the development of the Bronze Age and ceramics, but also includes oracle bones, bamboo root carvings, Neolithic jades and both hanging and hand scrolls.

A piece from the Quing Dynasty called “Jade Mountain” is particularly captivating. At first glance, the piece looks like one of the stones from the museum’s Gem Vault, seamlessly flowing from base rock into beautiful carving. As viewers stare at the green stone, intricate scenes of children playing and men herding cattle begin to emerge. The jade’s surface, at once apparently smooth and rigid, gradually seems to move before the viewer’s eyes.

Many other artifacts are just as remarkable. The exhibit presents them well, as dramatic lighting enhances the sometimes subtle, sometimes ostentatious character of each work. Informative text panels summarize the historical and cultural contexts of different artifacts, describing the influences of trade or government mandates. Nonetheless, the exhibit’s emphasis is on the inherent artistry of its objects. It does not bombard viewers with too much information, but lets them react to each piece personally.

Places like HMNS are “things we should go see sometime” for a reason. They are, quite simply, worth seeing. To spend a moment in these exhibits is to find history at its most tangible and art at its most original. From the bare fragments of Lucy to dusty vessels of the Bronze Age, visitors recall what it is to be simultaneously an animal and an artist, an organism and a person.

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