American Museum of Natural History · Upper West Side
The Nature of Color
An interactive exhibition on what color reveals about the natural world and ourselves, from how animals and plants use it to how it shapes mood.
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Preview: written before the show opened
Stand between a red, a green and a blue light and your shadow splits into colored copies of you. That's the white room. The show first opened here in March 2020, days before the Museum closed for the pandemic, so few visitors got to see it.
It is five rooms, each a color with a theme: white for light and how your eyes read it, yellow for how color makes you feel, green for animals that hide or show off, red for what color means to people, and blue for pigments and dyes. Live animals sit among artifacts, artworks and hands-on stations. In a city that wears black from November to March, it's a rare winter afternoon when your shadow is more colorful than your coat.
It's on Floor 3 and needs a ticket on top of Museum entry: pick an entry date after November 15, then add The Nature of Color at checkout. Members get preview days on November 13 to 15.
Look for
The colored shadows
In the white room, red, green and blue lights shine on a screen, and stepping in front of them throws shadows in different colors.
The indigo dye table
In the blue room, up to six people dye and print fabric virtually, beside indigo textiles and objects from Africa, Mexico and India.
The red wardrobe
A couture gown, a football uniform, an Indian wedding lehenga, a cardinal's robe and a man's pink suit, each standing for something color signals, from power to gender.
The color game show
A three-player quiz in the yellow room about how colors make you feel, with the audience playing along on their phones.
The leaf-tailed gecko
A live gecko in the green room shows camouflage, near live poison dart frogs whose bright skin does the opposite.
Good for
- Small Kids
- Teenagers
With kids
Almost every room has something to do: block colored lights with your body, dye fabric on a touch table, play the quiz, or paint the walls and floor by moving in the virtual paint room.
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Image credits
7
- There Are No Words: Si Lewen's ParadeCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Krasner and Pollock: Past ContinuousCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumAjay Suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0