As a child, nobody asks to go to the Field Museum, or the Carnegie, or the American Museum of Natural History. He or she wants to see “Sue,” or “the dinosaur room,” or “the squid and the whale.” The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History recently opened its newest permanent exhibit, the Sant Ocean Hall, which features a new addition to the iconic, life-size animal model contingent: Phoenix, the whale.
Right off the rotunda at the entrance to the Natural History museum, the gigantic whale swoops into an airy, high-ceilinged hall to balance precariously just over visitors’ heads. The model is based on an actual whale named Phoenix that has been tracked and photographed by scientists for years, so every scratch and callous matches the whale’s true physical appearance. Phoenix’s level of detail sets it apart from other full-scale models, and its size (45 feet in length) adds to the impact.
The Sant Ocean Hall marks the largest addition to the Museum of Natural History since it was constructed in the early 1900s, so it is only appropriate that it takes up an extremely large space and contains vast quantities of information. The Sant Ocean Hall is the kind of exhibit that will still be interesting on the third or fourth visit, and its aesthetics make you want to return just for the visual effect. The main hall contains glass display cases that curve around the space, leading visitors around the room in an orderly pattern. Oceanic hues of blue and green emanate from every display, and the entire room’s wavy and luminous quality gives the faint impression of being surrounded by water. A film of undersea scenes playing on panels surrounding the room makes the entire museum feel submerged.
The exhibit presents different perspectives on the ocean—from ecosystems to currents to food chains to how human beings can affect the deep blue. While these areas of the exhibit competently explain their topics (for children or adults, with cartoons or in-depth analyses as necessary), the most intriguing aspects of the Sant Ocean Hall are the sections devoted to deep sea exploration. Many of the creatures in these displays were discovered in the past few years or even months; the exhibit materials frequently stress that very little is known about the surface five miles below sea level, and only a handful have seen it in person.
This is the place to see creepy critters that seem as though they came from another planet or era: a coelacanth, which was thought to be extinct since the Cretaceous period but was rediscovered this century; deep-sea vents and their chemical-subsisting organisms, which many think may have been the first instance of life; transparent fish that glow i the dark or light up; a giant squid; a dumbo octopus; and a bottom-dwelling fish with a long, skinny tripod of legs, just to name a few.
Since deep-sea research is so new, the exhibits are captivating because of the novelty of the science. The Sant Ocean Hall manages to make even the driest subjects interesting: the “Science on a Sphere” exhibit uses impressive technology and graphic design to project ocean currents swirling around a globe in the center of the room. Making thermohaline circulation fascinating is tough, but the Sant Ocean Hall manages to do it by, once again, creating a memorable visual impact.
The deep ocean floor is a dark, cold, and isolated place, but those who choose to study it do so with mind-boggling enthusiasm. Maybe it was creatures like Phoenix, at exhibits like the Sant Ocean Hall, that caught these scientists’ imaginations as kids, prompting them to devote their lives to finding their white whale. Or bottom-dwelling monkfish, or phytoplankton.
