I couldn't chose just one.  In no particular order:

As a child, in the Cloisters, NYC- two things.
A brass (?) drinking straw with an ornate little holder.  Gave me
giggles imagining blowing bubbles in the wine.  Also, carved wooden
beads (rosary?) that were hinged and opened to reveal incrediblly detailed
carved scenes--perhaps something like a whole "last supper" in about
and inch and a half diameter.

Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde.  I'm not normally a very spiritual person,
but I was overwhelmed there with the sense of the presence of these
long-departed people.  It was as if they had been called away in the
midst of their daily tasks and suddenly 800 had passed.

The Chevalier Collection in the Mutter Museum, College of Physicans,
Philadelphia, PA.  This consists of a large cabinet (at least 100 drawers?)
of objects that people had swallowed.  Chevalier was a surgeon who
removed these objects.  They are organized by category.  Drawers of
safety pins, drawers of buttons, drawers of tacks/nails, etc.  There is also
a catalog for the collection in which each item is listed with the person from
which it was extracted including age, sex, and outcome of surgery.  It is so
wonderfully obssessive.

Dr. Ameisenhaufen's Fauna.  This was an obscure traveling art exhibit that
was displayed at the Moore College of Art (next door to the Academy of Natural
Sciences where I work) about 15 years ago.  It presented the bizarre, fictitious
biography of the field biologist Dr. Ameisenhaufen.  Included were photographs
of the beasts he described-all rather crude photo composites of things like
elephants with wings, a Tridacnid clam on a human leg in a swamp, snake with
five or six pairs of legs, etc.  In addition to the photos were field recordings of
the animals calls, and field notebooks with Ameisenhafen's descriptions-all
muddied and water stained.  I purchased the catalog, a slim paperbound volume
which seemed rather pricey at the time ($20) and have only since regretted that I
didn't get several.  As an "art exhibit" I'm not sure it reached an audience that
truly appreciated how wonderfully bizarre it was, but as a natural historian, it
was just suberb to me.  I wonder what looking at the things that really
resonate with an individual says about them?

Elana Benamy
Collection Manager, Invertebrate Biology
Academy of Natural Sciences
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