School: A Day at the Museums

The Cultural Plaza is one of the few parts of UF where members of the general public can be seen en masse (well, aside from days with a football game scheduled). It consists of a natural history museum, an art museum, and a 2000 seat performance hall. Admission to the museums is free, though parking can be a problem on school days (the official museum parking section is $3.00, but I just use my commuter decal). I visited both of the museums this past weekend, mostly for fun but also for something else...

The Florida Museum of Natural History contains various rotating exhibitions, mostly concerning either prehistoric wildlife or peoples indigenous to the Americas. Like most Florida nature museums, they have dioramas featuring the various ecosystems in and around our state. Unfortunately, nothing in the exhibits is alive - it's all just static displays and fake animals/people.

The neatest part of the museum is the new butterfly atrium. Unfortunately, this butterfly exhibit costs actual admission (6 bucks!). If you do enter, you'll see about two dozen species of butterflies and moths flying all around the mini-"forest." They put out lots of flowers and even plates of fruit to attract the insects, making it easy for shutterbugs to get great photos. It's a pretty calm little place.

The Harn Museum of Art features works chiefly from Africa, Asia, and Europe. They have a handful of less-known pieces from famous artists like Rodin and Monet, but much of the art on display comes from sources like the Qing Dynasty or the Zulu kingdoms. They have lots and lots of space to spare - I wonder why they don't put more of their collection on display.

The Harn has an expanded international art exhibition and a new cafe downstairs. This is a full-service restaurant, and I hear the food's okay, but the prices are enormous. The museum also has a little mini-library complete with books on art all across the world (I even ran across an art law book). I managed to dig up some tidbits here on the Inca:

All in all, both museums are worth a visit, especially since they're both free. They're not big museums, but they should kill a couple hours for the average visitor. I had an ulterior motive here, one that will be revealed in a future post.