This weekend I participated in a favorite origami event, a Special Folding Session at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. These used to happen on Sundays a few times a year, and it’s a good opportunity to learn some new folds and hang out with origami people, as well as see the museum. But there hasn’t been one since before the pandemic, so it’s good that they brought it back.
I taught my Halloween Spider, which I invented and developed last fall at the CoCon and OrgamiMIT conventions, and contributed one of ’em to the Origami Holiday Tree at the museum this year as well. The students in my class turned out to be middle-school-age kids, but already advanced folders. Meanwhile the adults there all took simpler classes.
This was first time I taught it so I was eager to see how it came across. When I designed it, my hope was to have an intermediate level model, but it turns out it’s pretty complex and technically demanding. In particular, there’s the sink of doom, probably around step 30 if I diagrammed the model. It’s the kind of fold where you just let the paper do it’s thing, and it usually just works out, but if you don’t see it in your mind it can be hard to understand. The students all got thru it, and did a pretty nice job, but not to the point where they could do the final sculpting to make the model look the model look truly great, spooky and terrifying.
I fell like if I spent some time unfolding the model and tweaking the proportions, and maybe adding a prefold or two, I could make the sink of doom much more intuitive and easier to execute. I’ll try and work on that before the next time I teach it.
After my class was over Jeannie and did a tour of the museum. I haven’t been to the AMNH in at least five years, so it was nice to be back. In some sense it feels like my “home” museum, since OUSA is headquartered there and I’ve been to visit so many times over the years. Alot of things haven’t changed. The dinosaur and megafauna fossil collection remains world-class, and the halls of African Animals, North American Mammals, and Marine Life, with their evocative dioramas, remain must-see classics. Even the overall Teddy-Roosevelt-era vibe and architecture feel warm and welcoming.
We saw a few new things. One was the revamped and newly re-opened hall of rocks, minerals and gems, which was quite impressive. Another was a show at the planetarium about the planets of the solar system. This was preceded by a short film in the waiting area about the history of the planetarium itself. The was also an excellent Imax film about the Serengeti in Africa, very informative and with great photography, but kid-friendly in that they didn’t actually show and zebras or wildebeests being slain and devoured by lions or crocodiles.