E News from Room 172
2015-2016
Global Synergy Takes Flight and Lands
Our Flat Super Hero's have taken flight and have (hopefully) landed safely in the United States and around the world. Our Flat Super Hero's are visiting museums and National Parks. Some Flat Super Hero's are even returning with wonderful pictures and sharing with us their amazing adventure. As they come back, we look at pictures, read captions, the letters, and look on the map to see where they went. We were even featured on a blog! We hope you enjoy the pictures and captions as much as we have.
Flat Andrew visits the Children's Museum of the Arts
Flat Andrew Superhero meeting Jeary, our Visitor Services Coordinator. Jeary greets all of our visitors at the front desk.
Flat Andrew Superhero with our Curator, Jil.
They are standing in front of "The East Village, 1979-1989" by Loren Munk. This artwork is a map of the East Village, a neighborhood in Manhattan that was popular for artists and galleries in the 1980s.
Tom Brooklyn
Flat Andrew Superhero with Nikki Rosato's artwork titled "Tom Brooklyn," created from the intricate lines of roads and rivers on a map.
Executive Director, Barbara, in the Swirl Studio
Flat Andrew Superhero with our Executive Director, Barbara, in the Swirl Studio. We have a room in our museum where you can spin all the way around in orange and purple chairs!
The Map of the Neighborhood I Live
Flat Andrew Superhero with "The Map of the Neighborhood I Live" by Clara Foissner, Age 10 from Belgium. This artwork is part of our collection of children's artworks from around the world!
CMA Blog Posting
Flat Superhero Ivan visits The Rattlesnake Museum
Flat Superhero Ivan had a blast at the International Rattlesnake Museum. He saw memorabilia, visited the gift shop, and saw read rattlesnakes.
Flat Super Hero Chris visits the Panhandle Plains Museum
This is our newest temporary exhibit called Hunting the Panhandle-Plains. It talks about different animals that lived here and the native people that hunted them for food.
Flat Chris visits the transportation area of PPHM.
Highlights include one of the oldest Ford automobiles in existence: a 1903 Ford Model A Runabout (#28 of only 1708 produced) and the oldest assembly line vehicle in the world!
Chris meet Kris! This is Kris Weigle, an exhibits specialist at PPHM.
That means that he actually builds the temporary exhibits, including walls, paint, woodworking and building places for the artifacts to go. In his spare time, he is a real life cowboy (in case you couldn’t tell by the hat), and owns 6 horses!
Watch out, Chris!
This is Ally, PPHM’s allosaurus and he lives in our Paleontology gallery. This is one of my favorite exhibits in the whole museum because we have lots of things you can’t find anywhere else because this area used to be a gigantic inland sea. Ally is a distance relative of the T. Rex, only much smaller if you can believe it! Check out those sharp teeth! Do you think he eats plants or meat?
Check Out those Teeth!
Chris this is their dimetrodon, or sail lizard. He is a meat eater and uses the sail on his back to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. He lived over 295 million years ago and went extinct about 40 million years BEFORE dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Flat Chris and Micah!
This is Micah, another one of our exhibits specialists, in front of our 1925 oil derrick, which is used to pump oil out of the ground. This is the showpiece of our museum, and everyone can see it when they drive by. They brought the derrick in on 3 semi-trucks and put it together piece by piece. They loaded in through the windows on the right side of the photo before they were put in place. Micah and his twin brother, Seth, collect of snakes, birds, turtles and lizards. They have over 100 in their collection!
Meet Becky. Becky is a Curator of History
Meet Becky. Becky is our Curator of History (she collects artifacts for the museum) at PPHM and the project manager for our renovation of the Petroleum Wing. This exhibit is 17,000 square feet and we are spending almost 2 million dollars updating it. It is under construction right now, but Becky is standing in front of the job shack, where visitors can see all of the different jobs available in the petroleum industry. I will be happy to send you more pictures when it is finished
Flat Chris Visits Pioneer Town
This is Pioneer Town, an authentic 1890 town in the Texas Panhandle. It includes places like a hotel, livery stable, bank, school, general store and marshal’s office. You can walk into all of the buildings and really experience what life was like during that time. It opened in 2012 and the whole staff helped build it, so we are really proud of it
Flat Chris and a Chuckwagon
This is our Chuckwagon, which was used by cowboys on the cattle drive to store food and supplies for their 2-3 month journey. They typically ate beans and cornbread for EVERY meal – could you imagine?! It also stored water for the cowboys to drink, since water is very scarce in the Texas Panhandle. Do you think there was a refrigerator on the chuckwagon?
Flat Chris Meets Thunder
We are on the campus of West Texas A&M University and this is the university’s mascot, Thunder. He greets all of our visitors at PPHM, and I think he likes you! Over 30 million buffalo roamed the Panhandle-Plains in the mid-1800s. Settlers said that it sounded like thunder followed by an earthquake when they were running across the prairie.
Did you know we have all of the main characters from the movie “Ice Age” in our Paleontology collection? The far left is Sid, or a Harlan Ground Sloth, the tusk to the left of Chris is from a Mammoth, or Manny in the movie, the cat to the right of his head is Diego, the saber-toothed cat!