Blog Archive: Our Collections

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Posted Sun, 01/29/2017 - 4:59pm

The Art and Details of Scientific Illustration

Natalia Wilkins-Tyler is a Salt Lake City-based scientific illustrator who has accomplished a number of fantastic illustrations for NHMU. Read about her profession and see a video of her in action.

Posted Wed, 01/11/2017 - 6:22pm

Dusting our Dirty Dinosaurs

If you think your spring cleaning is difficult, try our Past Worlds Gallery on for size. Our exhibits team recently spent the better part of a week spiffing up all of our dinosaur skeletons.

Posted Wed, 12/21/2016 - 2:59pm

Largest Navajo Pitch Basket

The largest Navajo pitch basket known to exist is on display in our Collections Wall. Learn about the artist, Etta Rock, and the process of making a pitch basket.

Posted Mon, 10/24/2016 - 2:16pm

The tarantula hawk, found in Utah, is a page out of a collection of horror stories. Beautiful, huge, painful, and parasitic - it's a wasp that tops the Sting Pain Index and finds its way into NHMU's "The Power of Poison" exhibit.

Posted Thu, 10/20/2016 - 9:28am

Jar of Snakes

It's perhaps the spookiest Halloween decoration ever. Our Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, Eric Rickart, explains what's in this jar of snakes.

Posted Tue, 10/11/2016 - 11:27am

Mountain Mahogany: One Tough Rose

Curl-Leaf Mountain Mahogany is a high-elevation evergreen found throughout Utah and the western U.S. The fact that it's actually a part of the rose family is just one of its remarkable traits.

Posted Mon, 10/10/2016 - 2:49pm

Goshute Burden Basket

A new addition to our Collections Wall: a very large Goshute burden basket made sometime in the late 1800s - early 1900s. Learn about it's function and provenance.

Posted Mon, 10/03/2016 - 12:23pm

NHMU's Barrier Canyon Mural

No one knows for sure when Utah’s most famous rock art – the Great Gallery found in Horseshoe Canyon – was created, but we pay homage to it and to the WPA-commissioned art piece hanging in our 1st floor, behind the Admissions desk.

Posted Sun, 10/02/2016 - 2:01pm

Bold Figures, Blurred History: The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon

The Great Gallery is one of the most significant pictograph panels in the American Southwest, yet archaeologists have struggled over when it was created and what it could mean.

Posted Sat, 10/01/2016 - 1:16pm

Irons, Paint & Pulleys

Moving the 60-foot-by-12-foot Barrier Canyon Mural to our new museum location in 2011 took a lot of planning, and more than a little conservation of the aging mural.

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