I was in the National Museum of Natural History on Sunday–love that place–and couldn’t resist new pictures of the elephant. I know, this isn’t my first blog post about that elephant, but he’s just so cool-looking. And I wanted to try out my new camera.

When I was a kid, the elephant stood on a round platform in the middle of the rotunda, but now it has this more natural-looking home. I just spent a few minutes trying to figure out when that renovation happened (vague guess: 15 years ago?) and was unsuccessful, but I did learn a bit more about the history of the museum. The museum opened a little over 100 years ago, and it had a lot of art then, mostly in what is now the Ocean Hall. Odd, huh, for a natural history museum? The art is over at the American Art Museum now, but here’s a nice post about how art inspired taxidermy.

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