American Museum of Natural History. Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins.

Exist Dates

2007 - present

Biographical or Historical Note

abstract

Permanent exhibition. Opened February 10, 2007. Located on Floor 1, Section 4. The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History opened as the "cutting edge" successor to the Hall of Human Biology. It is the first exhibition hall in the Museum to incorporate a teaching laboratory, the Sackler Education Laboratory for Comparative Genomics and Human Origins (1, 2007/08, p. 4, 41). The curators were Ian Tattersall of Anthropology and Rob DeSalle of Invertebrate Zoology. The hall covers millions of years of human history, from early ancestors who lived more than six million years ago to modern Homo sapiens, who evolved 200,000 to 150,000 years ago, pairing fossils with DNA research to present the remarkable history of human evolution (2).

The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins features casts of Lucy and Turkana Boy, the Mural of Primate Evolution, exhibits on Peking Man, Neanderthal tools, and Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon dioramas (2). The hall received the 2009 Merit Award for the Environments category from the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (3, 2009, p. 36).

Sources

(1) American Museum of Natural History. Annual Reports. New York: American Museum of Natural History, 2006-2009.

(2) American Museum of Natural History. “Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins”, accessed May 12, 2016, http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/human-origins-and-cultural-halls/anne-and-bernard-spitzer-hall-of-human-origins.

Information for the hall appears in the following Museum publications:

American Museum of Natural History Annual Reports for years 2006 (page 4); 2007 (page 4, 13, 36, 40, 41); 2009 (page 23, 36).

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Related Corporate, Personal, and Family Names

Arnold and Arlene Goldstein Foundation
Donor for the hall (1, 2007/08, p. 41)

Bovis Lend Lease Consulting
Construction manager for the hall, (1, 2007/08, p. 41)

DeSalle, Rob
Curator for the hall (1, 2007/08, p. 4)

Goldstein, Arlene
Donor, Laetoli diorama (1, 2006, p. 6)

Goldstein, Arlene
Donor, Laetoli diorama (1, 2006, p. 6)

Hall of Human Biology
The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins replaced the Hall of Human Biology.

Harvey, David 1950-
Senior Vice President, Exhibition Department at the Museum, oversaw construction of the hall (1, 2007/08, p. 4)

Perkins Eastman Architects
Architects for the hall (1, 2007/08, p. 41)

Spitzer, Anne
Donor,(1, 2006, p. 4)

Spitzer, Bernard
Donor,(1, 2006, p. 4)

Tattersall, Ian
Curator for the hall (1, 2007/08, p. 4)

Related Resources

subjectOf

Historic Halls of the American Museum of Natural History
Curated digital images of permanent halls in the American Museum of Natural History Library, Digital Special Collections.

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