Dazzling Redesign Of The Allison And Roberto Mignone Halls Of Gems And Minerals At The American Museum Of Natural History Will Open In Fall 2020

February 25, 2020

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Re-Envisioned Halls Will Present the Current Science of Mineral Formation and Showcase Spectacular New Specimens and World-Renowned Collection A New Temporary Exhibition Gallery to Open with Beautiful Creatures, A Celebration of Vintage and Contemporary Jewelry Inspired by Animals

The American Museum of Natural History today announced that it will open the completely redesigned Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals in fall 2020. A brilliant showcase for one of the greatest collections of its kind and an engaging guide to recent science about our dynamic planet, the 11,000-square-foot halls will feature:

• recently acquired specimens, including two remarkable amethyst geodes that are among the world’s largest on public display
• a gallery of gems re-presenting treasures such as the legendary 563-carat “Star of India” sapphire and 632-carat Patricia emerald
• and the halls’ first temporary exhibition gallery, opening with Beautiful Creatures, a celebration of exquisite historic and contemporary jewelry inspired by animals.

With interactive displays, touchable specimens, and media, the halls’ redesigned exhibits will tell the fascinating story of how the vast diversity of mineral types—which, similarly to biological organisms, are grouped into species—arose on Earth, how scientists classify them, and how humans have used them throughout the millennia for personal adornment, tools, and technology.

Highlights will include a luminous gallery featuring a wall-sized panel of rock glowing fluorescently in shades of orange and green; a pair of exquisite amethyst geodes from Uruguay that tower to a height of 12 feet and 9 feet; and the 9-pound almandine “subway” garnet discovered under Manhattan’s 35th Street in 1885. Jewelry in animal forms featured in the temporary exhibition gallery will include pieces by Cartier, Bulgari, and Tiffany & Co., as well as by contemporary designers such as Bina Goenka. The halls are curated by George E. Harlow, curator in the Museum’s Division of Physical Sciences. Marion Fasel is guest curator for the Beautiful Creatures temporary exhibition.

The halls of gems and minerals are named for Roberto and Allison Mignone, long-time Museum supporters and volunteers. Roberto Mignone is a Museum Trustee and Allison Mignone is vice chair of the Museum’s Campaign.

The halls are undergoing renovation as part of the physical and programmatic initiatives undertaken in conjunction with the 150th anniversary celebration of the Museum, which was founded in 1869. These projects will culminate in the opening of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, a major new facility that will house exhibition galleries, education spaces, and collections.

“The opening of the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals will be a milestone in a wide range of capital and programmatic enhancements commemorating the Museum’s 150th anniversary,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. “By telling the fascinating stories of the complex processes that gave rise to the extraordinary diversity of minerals on our dynamic planet and describing how people have used them throughout history for personal adornment, tools, and technology, the Halls will not just be glittering but also intellectually engaging. The new Mignone galleries will also be a major gateway, directly linking visitors to the new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. We are indebted to Allison and Roberto Mignone for making this important project possible.”

“When I first started as a curator at the Museum over 40 years ago, the most recent version of these galleries had just opened. Science has progressed significantly in that time, such as with the concept of mineral evolution,” said George E. Harlow, curator of the new halls. “These new exhibits will present our current scientific understanding of gems and minerals, present the environments in which they form, and focus on the intimate relationship between minerals and life.”

“Halls like these are crucial and tangible teaching tools that communicate an understanding of humanity’s place in the universe,” said Allison Mignone. “Our family’s experiences at the Museum have helped us see the discoveries and sparks that take place when spectacular exhibits such as this one are on view, and remarkable stories, such as those that will be featured in these renovated galleries, are told.”

Exhibits in the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals will explore the conditions on our planet that have made possible the extraordinary variety of mineral species found on Earth. In addition to the role of plate tectonics and fluids responsible for the formation of crystals, exhibits will reveal how the introduction of free oxygen into the Earth’s atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago triggered an explosion not only in biological life but also in mineral diversity. The oxygenated atmosphere—produced by cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic organisms—made it possible for oxygen to combine into many more vividly colorful minerals on Earth, now numbering approximately 5,500 species.

The section of the Museum that will house the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals had long been a cul-de-sac, which could be entered and exited only from the south end. In the future, the Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals will be linked to the new Gilder Center, allowing visitors to circulate with greater ease and less congestion.

The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals will be a striking complement to the David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth and Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth illustrates the evolution and inner workings of our dynamic planet with outstanding geological specimens and interactive exhibits on climate change, while the Hayden Planetarium educates visitors about the latest space science through immersive presentations such as the Museum’s newest Space Show Worlds Beyond Earth. The Ross Hall of Meteorites—which is immediately adjacent to the Mignone galleries—explores the origins of our solar system through holdings from the Museum’s world-class collection of meteorites, which contain some of the same minerals found on Earth.

With exhibits that support New York State and national science education standards, these halls serve as a vital resource for school and camp groups, educators, and graduate students in the Museum’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, which provides a specialization in Earth science for teachers of grades 7 through 12.

The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals is designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates together with the American Museum of Natural History’s award-winning Exhibition Department under the direction of Lauri Halderman, vice president for exhibition.

The Museum gratefully acknowledges Allison and Roberto Mignone for their leadership support of the redesigned Halls of Gems and Minerals.

Generous support has been provided by the Arthur Ross Foundation.

Worlds Beyond Earth is dedicated to the memory of Charles Hayden in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth and made possible by the generous support of the Charles Hayden Foundation.

Proudly sponsored by Bank of America.

Generously sponsored in loving memory of Wallace Gilroy.

About the American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space plus the Hayden Planetarium, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. It is home to New York State’s official memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, a tribute to Roosevelt’s enduring legacy of environmental conservation. The Museum’s approximately 200 scientists draw on a world-class research collection of more than 34 million artifacts and specimens, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such free-standing, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. Annual on-site attendance has grown to approximately 5 million, and the Museum’s exhibitions and Space Shows can be seen in venues on six continents. The Museum’s website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information.

Hours

The Museum is open daily, 10 am–5:45 pm. The Museum is closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Admission

Museum admission is free to all New York City school and camp groups.

Pay-what-you-wish admission is available only at ticket counters, where the amount you pay is up to you.

General Admission, which includes admission to all 45 Museum halls and the Rose Center for Earth and Space but does not include special exhibitions, giant-screen 2D or 3D film, or Space Show, is $23 (adults), $18 (students/seniors), and $13 (children ages 2–12). All prices are subject to change.

General Admission Plus One includes general admission plus one special exhibition, giant-screen 2D or 3D film, or Space Show: $28 (adults), $22.50 (students/seniors), $16.50 (children ages 2–12).

General Admission Plus All includes general admission plus all special exhibitions, giant-screen 2D or 3D film, and Space Show: $33 (adults), $27 (students/seniors), $20 (children ages 2–12).

Public Information

For additional information, the public may call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum’s website at amnh.org.

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New Exhibition At The American Museum Of Natural History In New York, The Nature of Color, Opens March 9

February 2020

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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ANNOUNCES THE NATURE OF COLOR new exhibition will let visitors of all ages connect with color through experimentation and play opens for member previews on March 6, 2020, and to the public on March 9, 2020

Color is all around us, woven so tightly into our lives that we rarely stop to question what it is and how it works. Where do the colors in diamonds and rainbows come from? How have some animals benefited by evolving to stand out, while others survive by blending in? Why do some colors make us happy while others make us, well, blue? How did pink come to be associated with femininity in Western culture after centuries of being considered suitable for all? The Nature of Color, a new exhibition opening at the American Museum of Natural History this spring, reveals how color carries information in nature—where organisms use it to find food, warn off predators, and conceal or reveal themselves—and across cultures, where different colors can signal a wide range of meanings, from good luck to power to a sense of urgency.

This fun, family-friendly exhibition features models, cultural objects, media, and interactive exhibits that will invite visitors to play and experiment while exploring the science of color, how it makes us feel, how it is perceived across cultures, the history of color production, and how plants and animals use color to help them survive and reproduce. Visitors will explore the physics of color in an immersive color-changing room and a light lab with hands-on activities to discover that white light is actually a mixture of colors; play a game show interactive—on kiosks or from their mobile devices—that examines how colors affect emotions, alertness, perception of time, appetite, and much more; and “paint” without the mess in a floor-to-ceiling color play interactive just by moving their hands.

Visitors also will come face to face with three live species that rely on their unique coloration for survival: the leaf-tailed gecko, which evolved to blend in with dried leaves and tree bark; the golden poison frog, among the most colorful creatures on Earth, whose skin contains a deadly poison traditionally used in hunting darts; and iridescent blue beetles. A section on making color will explore the rich history of blue pigments in particular, with objects from the Museum’s anthropological collection and an interactive that will demonstrate the process of dying indigo fabric, which was used to create the dark blue hues of Japanese artwork, African textiles, and the first blue jeans. Several hands-on interactives will explore the many ways in which objects can produce color. And a variety of striking exhibits will demonstrate how the meaning of certain colors can vary greatly when used for special occasions, as identity markers, as symbols for nations, teams, communities, and more.

As part of the exhibition, the Museum will feature an installation of portraits by Brazilian photographer Angélica Dass. Her work showcases the diversity of human skin tones, challenging socially constructed racial categories and celebrating the beauty and diversity of humans from around the world.

The Nature of Color is curated by Rob DeSalle, a curator in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology whose recent exhibitions include Our Senses: An Immersive Experience, and Brain: The Inside Story.

The Nature of Color will open to the public on Monday, March 9, 2020. Museum Members will be able to preview the exhibition starting on Friday, March 6, through Sunday, March 8.

A trailer about The Nature of Color can be seen here.

A media preview for The Nature of Color will be held on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.

Doors open at 10 am; Program starts at 10:30 am

You may RSVP here. If you are not immediately connected to the site, please cut and paste https://www.amnh.org/nature-of-color-media-preview into your browser. Alternatively, you may call 212-769-5800 or email communications@amnh.org

Enter at 77th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West

The Museum gratefully acknowledges the Richard and Karen LeFrak Exhibition and Education Fund.

The Nature of Color is generously supported by Chase Private Client.

American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space plus the Hayden Planetarium, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. It is home to New York State’s official memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, a tribute to Roosevelt’s enduring legacy of environmental conservation. The Museum’s approximately 200 scientists draw on a world-class research collection of more than 34 million artifacts and specimens, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such free-standing, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. Annual on-site attendance has grown to approximately 5 million, and the Museum’s exhibitions and Space Shows can be seen in venues on six continents. The Museum’s website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information.

 

Follow

Become a fan of the American Museum of Natural History on Facebook at facebook.com/naturalhistory, follow us on Instagram at @AMNH, Tumblr at amnhnyc, or Twitter at @AMNH. 

World's Beyond Earth, A New Hayden Planetarium Space Show Opens January 21 At The American Museum Of Natural History

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narrated by Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o, new show features a stunning exploration of worlds that share our solar system

Featuring immersive visualizations of distant worlds, groundbreaking space missions, and breathtaking scenes depicting the evolution of our solar system, the American Museum of Natural History’s new Hayden Planetarium Space Show, Worlds Beyond Earth will open January 21, 2020, using a new planetarium projection system that is the most advanced in the world, and is part of the Museum’s 150th anniversary celebration. Worlds Beyond Earth, narrated by Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o, takes viewers on an exhilarating journey that reveals the surprisingly dynamic nature of the worlds that orbit our Sun and the unique conditions that make life on our planet possible. “In the past 50 years, humankind’s ability to travel through and study our solar system has increased exponentially with the advent of robotic spacecraft, and we have learned much about our neighboring planets—how they were formed and what they are like today,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. “As with our previous, enormously popular Space Shows, Worlds Beyond Earth is a feat of science visualization, built on real data and research, and now dazzlingly showcased through the Hayden Planetarium’s new cutting-edge projection system. We can think of no better way to celebrate the thrilling state of space science today as well as the Museum’s 150th anniversary of bringing the world and the universe to our visitors.” While humans have to yet to walk on another world beyond the Moon, Worlds Beyond Earth celebrates the extraordinary Age of Exploration carried out by our closest proxies, robotic explorers, over the past 50 years. Created by an award-winning team that includes Museum scientists, educators, and science visualization experts, Worlds Beyond Earth is an immersive theater experience based on authentic data from NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration (JAXA) missions, telescopes, supercomputer simulations, and research conducted at institutions around the globe. Viewers will be taken on an adventure across the solar system, from our Moon and planetary neighbors Mars and Venus to beyond the asteroid belt, where worlds of ice and gas like Saturn and Jupiter host moons revealing active weather, erupting volcanoes, and buried oceans. “Our ability to render these distant worlds is nothing short of astonishing, thanks to past and current space missions and the data they provide,” said Carter Emmart, the Museum’s director of astrovisualization and the director of Worlds Beyond Earth. “We’re not making anything up here. The height, color, and shapes we see come from actual measurements. In the Space Show, you see these beautiful objects as they actually are, to the best of our abilities.” This is the first Hayden Planetarium Space Show that will “land” audience members on other worlds in our solar neighborhood, reconstructing actual events at specific locations, including a landing on the gray, cratered surface of the Moon, which viewers will reach by following an Apollo launch out of Cape Canaveral and the subsequent landing of the Lunar Module “Falcon,” carrying the first Lunar Roving Vehicle; and the liquid methane lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan, an almost Earthlike but extremely cold world 1.4 billion kilometers away, illuminated by ESA’s Huygens probe, launched from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Visualizations based on 13 years of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will show viewers Saturn’s impressive, swirling rings as never before: bubbling with moonlets—house-sized baby moons—that form through a process that scientists think may parallel planet formation in the solar system. In addition, audiences will encounter one of Jupiter’s many moons, Io, which is the most volcanically active object in the solar system despite being covered by ice; Europa, another Jupiter moon with more liquid water beneath its icy crust than all of the oceans on Earth; Comet 67P, a frozen object traveling between the inner and outer solar system that the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft chased for 10 years; and the dry and dusty landscape of Mars, based on high-resolution global maps from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, and ESA’s Mars Express. “I don’t think many people realize just how much we, as the human race, have seen of our solar system,” said Worlds Beyond Earth curator Denton Ebel, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Earth of Planetary Sciences and chair of the Division of Physical Sciences. “But we are out there, via these incredibly complex and successful spacecraft, and what we’re learning about our unique place in it is surprising and also a bit sobering.” For example, as Worlds Beyond Earth audiences will see, NASA’s Magellan mission to Earth’s “twin” planet, Venus, revealed a world that once may have had conditions very similar to our planet’s but today has a surface hot enough to melt lead because of its long-term buildup of greenhouse gases. Sending spacecraft to explore Venus deepened scientists’ understanding of global warming and illuminated that pumping carbon dioxide into our own atmosphere leads to rising temperatures and threatens civilization on Earth. In contrast, our other solar neighbor, Mars, is freezing cold. Exploration reveals that Mars’ once-plentiful water supply and active volcanoes created conditions for life but that they didn’t last long, as demonstrated in a dramatic simulation of Mars’ surface evolution. The Red Planet’s core cooled quickly, causing its magnetic field to decay and allowing most of its atmosphere to be stripped away. What is left is a dry, frozen desert—a “failed Earth.” Unlike Venus and Mars, Earth is surrounded by a strong magnetic field—powered by its hot, churning outer core, which is visualized in Worlds Beyond Earth—that forms a shield that deflects solar wind and protects our atmosphere. Our planet pumps out heat, feeding volcanoes at the surface and helping to sustain this atmosphere with the perfect blend of molecules for life. Worlds Beyond Earth is the first Museum Space Show to take full advantage of the world’s most advanced planetarium projection system, installed last year in the Hayden Planetarium. The first-of-its-kind high dynamic range (HDR) laser system displays the widest color gamut of any planetarium in the world, allowing visitors to experience as never before both the darkness of outer space and the most colorful worlds in our solar system (see release on Hayden Planetarium upgrades). Worlds Beyond Earth is part of the Museum’s 150th anniversary celebration, which officially began in March 2019 and includes a series of events, programs, and exhibitions inspired by the Museum’s legacy of scientific exploration and science education, including the role of the historic Hayden Planetarium in bringing the latest space science to the public. First built in 1935 and named for philanthropist Charles Hayden, the world-famous facility has transported generations of New Yorkers to the edges of the observable universe, revealing mysterious cosmic phenomena and nurturing their curiosity about the magnitude and workings of our universe. The new Space Show is dedicated to the memory of Charles Hayden and opens during the 150th anniversary of the year of his birth (see release on history of the Planetarium). “We are proud to be an ongoing supporter of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Worlds Beyond Earth will continue the Museum’s long legacy of presenting the latest space science to NYC students and the general public.” Worlds Beyond Earth is sponsored by Bank of America. “Bank of America is pleased to sponsor the exciting new space show, Worlds Beyond Earth,” said Anne Walker, NYC President, Bank of America. “As one of the largest corporate supporters of arts and culture programming world-wide, we believe in the power of the arts to help communities thrive, educate, inspire, enrich societies, and create greater cultural understanding.”  Worlds Beyond Earth is curated by Denton Ebel, curator in the Museum’s Department of Earth of Planetary Sciences and chair of the Division of Physical Sciences, who specializes in the study of meteorites and cosmochemistry, and directed by Carter Emmart, who, in addition to his work as the Museum’s director of astrovisualization, was one of the original team members of the NASA-funded Digital Universe and OpenSpace projects, which continue to redefine how planetarium theaters present science to the public through immersive data visualization. Worlds Beyond Earth is produced by Vivian Trakinski, who directs the Museum’s science visualization program, and documentary filmmaker Gavin Guerra. Rosamond Kinzler, senior director of science education, co-director of the Museum’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, and the principal investigator of the OpenSpace project, is the executive producer. The script for Worlds Beyond Earth is written by Natalie Starkey, a geologist who is an author and science communicator. The score is written by Robert Miller, a New York City composer who also wrote the music for four previous Museum Space Shows, and was primarily recorded in Abbey Road Studios in London. It includes a classical guitar segment recorded in New York by musician and former New York Yankees player Bernie Williams. Worlds Beyond Earth is the Hayden Planetarium’s sixth Space Show since the opening in 2000 of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, which premiered the first Space Show, Passport to the Universe, narrated by Tom Hanks, that same year. Previous Space Shows have included The Search for Life: Are We Alone? (2002), narrated by Harrison Ford; Cosmic Collisions (2006), narrated by Robert Redford; Journey to the Stars (2009), narrated by Whoopi Goldberg; and Dark Universe (2013), narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium. Worlds Beyond Earth was created by the American Museum of Natural History, the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space, and the Hayden Planetarium. Worlds Beyond Earth is dedicated to the memory of Charles Hayden in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth and made possible by the generous support of the Charles Hayden Foundation. Proudly sponsored by Bank of America. Generously sponsored in loving memory of Wallace Gilroy. OpenSpace is based upon work supported by NASA under award No. NNX16AB93A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

About the American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org) The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Hayden Planetarium, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. It is home to New York State’s official memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, a tribute to Roosevelt’s enduring legacy of environmental conservation. The Museum’s five active research divisions and three cross-disciplinary centers support approximately 200 scientists, whose work draws on a world-class permanent collection of more than 34 million specimens and artifacts, as well as on specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, it is the only American museum authorized to grant the Ph.D. degree and also to grant the Master of Arts in Teaching degree. Annual visitation has grown to approximately 5 million, and the Museum’s exhibitions and Space Shows are seen by millions more in venues on six continents. The Museum’s website, mobile apps, and massive open online courses (MOOCs) extend its scientific research and collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to additional audiences around the globe. Visit amnh.org for more information.

Follow Become a fan of the American Museum of Natural History on Facebook at facebook.com/naturalhistory, follow us on Instagram at @AMNH, Tumblr at amnhnyc, or Twitter at @AMNH.

September 11 Museum Opening To The Public May 21st.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, Chairman of the Sept. 11 Museum, with museum President Joe Daniels, addresses a news conference in the venue, in New York, Wednesday, May 14, 2014. Leaders of the soon-to-open Sept. 11 museum are portraying it as a monument to unity and resilience. (AP Photo)

 (AP) - The museum devoted to the story of Sept. 11 tells it in victims' last voicemails, in photos of people falling from the twin towers, in the scream of sirens, in the dust-covered shoes of those who fled the skyscrapers' collapse, in the wristwatch of one of the airline passengers who confronted the hijackers.

By turns chilling and heartbreaking, a place of both deathly silence and distressing sounds, the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens this week deep beneath ground zero, 12½ years after the terrorist attacks.

The project was marked by construction problems, financial squabbles and disputes over the appropriate way to honor the nearly 3,000 people killed in New York, Washington and the Pennsylvania countryside.

Whatever the challenges in conceiving it, "you won't walk out of this museum without a feeling that you understand humanity in a deeper way. And for a museum, if we can achieve that objective, we've done our job," museum President Joe Daniels said Wednesday.

The privately operated museum - built along with the memorial plaza above for $700 million in private donations and tax dollars - will be dedicated Thursday with a visit from President Barack Obama and will be open initially to victims' families, survivors and first responders. It will open to the public May 21.

Charles G. Wolf, who lost his wife, Katherine, planned to be at the ceremonial opening.

"I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and I'm dreading tomorrow," he said Wednesday. "It brings everything up."

Visitors start in an airy pavilion where the rusted tops of two of the World Trade Center's trident-shaped columns shoot upward. From there, stairs and ramps lead visitors on an unsettling journey into 9/11.

First, a dark corridor is filled with the voices of people remembering the day. Then visitors find themselves looking over a cavernous space, 70 feet below ground, at the last steel column removed during the ground zero cleanup - a totem covered with the numbers of police precincts and firehouses and other messages.

Descend farther - past the battered "survivors' staircase" that hundreds used to escape the burning towers - and there are such artifacts as a mangled piece of the antenna from atop the trade center and a fire truck with its cab shorn off.

And then, through a revolving door, visitors are plunged into the chaos of Sept. 11: fragments of planes, a teddy bear left at the impromptu memorials that arose after the attacks, the sounds of emergency radio transmissions and office workers calling loved ones.

"We wanted a very gradual, quiet descent, for that connection to actually emerge," said Carl Krebs, an architect on the project.

The project recently faced objections about how Muslims are depicted in a documentary film, and complaints from some victims' relatives about the decision to place unidentified remains behind a wall at the site.

"I'm still processing" the impact of seeing the museum, said Anthony Garner, who lost his brother Harvey on 9/11 and visited on Wednesday. He said it will show visitors "that they're in a very sacred place and a very historic place.

Exhibition In New York Depicts Ancient Buddhist Caves

Contribued by Ula Inlytzky, AP.

A full scale replica cave from the 8th century that contains the Bodhisattva of the Mogao Caves is presented in "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road," at the China Institute, in New York, Tuesday, April 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

 The China Institute Gallery has been transformed into an ancient cave, taking visitors back more than a millennium to a dazzling world where Buddhist worshippers adorned the walls with colorful frescoes, silk prayer banners and lavishly painted life-size clay sculptures.

"Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road" features a replica of an 8th century cave carved into the limestone cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang from 366 to about 1300.

It is one of 735 Mogao Caves constructed during what is known as the high Tang period (705-781), designed for devout Buddhists to gather and worship. Nearly every inch is covered in art, with a canopy ceiling resplendent in floral and diamond shapes. One end is filled with life-sized sculptures of a Buddha flanked by two monk disciples wearing luxuriously patterned robes, two bare-chested figures and two ferocious-looking guardians in military armor.

While there have been exhibitions that have featured individual pieces from the Mogoa Caves, this is the first exhibition in the United States to put all the elements of the cave shrines into context, said Annette Juliano, a professor of Chinese art history at Rutgers University.

It shows the "relationship between the architecture, the pictures, the subject matter and the (ritual) practices . the actual use of the cave, rather than just an abstraction," added Juliano, who visited the caves for the first time in 1980.

Many of the caves are exquisitely preserved but others are fragile due to neglect over the centuries and the conditions of the surrounding desert and sand dunes. To protect them from further erosion, tourist access is limited to several dozen caves a day that are rotated regularly.

The exhibition also features a 6th-century replica of an elaborate square altar called the Central Stupa Pillar that highlights the religious ritual of circumambulation - an act of veneration - in which the faithful walk clockwise around the altar that contains four niches, each holding a Buddha.

"Walking around the stupa pillar helps to empty your mind to allow visualization, to focus on the images of the Buddhas," said Juliano, who contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog.

Exact, hand-painted reproductions of wall motifs and story scenes complete the exhibition space in this gallery. Among the highlights is a Thousand Buddha pattern that covers an entire wall and is symbolic of the deity's omnipresence. Among the narrative paintings is the tale of the Deer King and his journey toward enlightenment.

Authentic silk prayer banners, a handwritten Buddhist scripture in near mint condition, a Yuan dynasty fragment of a mathematical document, small clay figurines, Persian silver coins that bear witness to foreign travelers on the Silk Road, patterned floor tiles and oil lamps used to light the dark caves round out the small two-gallery exhibition.

The Mogao Cave shrines, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, were largely unknown in the West until they were discovered in 1900 by a Hungarian archaeologist, Sir Aurel Stein.

Dunhuang, located at the north and south crossroads of the Silk Road, was a strategic hub of trade and religion. Stein, who made several treks through Central Asia, had heard rumors of a cave room sealed in the 11th century containing tens of thousands of manuscripts, scrolls, silk paintings and textiles dating in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit and other languages.

A local caretaker had uncovered the treasure trove after discovering a crack in the wall of a corridor leading to a larger cave. It's not clear why the room was sealed, but scholars speculate they were walled up to protect them from the threat of invasion from nomadic people.

Stein was able to persuade the caretaker to sell a portion of the material in exchange for money for the cave's upkeep. In subsequent years, almost 80 percent of the contents were taken out of the country by foreign adventurers. Today, the treasures are found in various museums and libraries around the world.

The exhibition, organized by the Dunhuang Academy, runs through July 21. A second exhibition in the fall will focus on paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists inspired by the caves.

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If You Go...

CHINA INSTITUTE: 125 E. 66th St., Manhattan; http://www.chinainstitute.org/ or 212-744-8181. Daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission, $7; students and seniors, $4.