american museum of natural history (sic)

I really don't get this museum's idea of natural history... you have things i understand that have to be there, like biological history of the human kind and other animals (i.e. fossils), geological history of our planet and the outer space, etc... then you have things that are kind of crappy, and I don't understand that much, like a lot of stuffed animals, some of them exhibited in painted cages, which kinda reproduce their natural environment, but some of them simply hanging on the wall (foxes, bobcats, etc), and the most stupid of the things: pinned butterflies... why if you love butterflies would you kill them to exhibit them? no idea... i don't like this at all, but well, you can understand that they are in a museum of natural history... now, the problem is that you also have things for which i can't see at all the reason to be in a so-called museum of natural history, like these halls on Asian, Mexican, Polynesian, Native American, African peoples (as in the picture above)... i mean, this is part of natural history according to them? you know, these peoples that are studied by anthropologists, as opposed to those other peoples that are studied by sociologists, economists, etc. this must be the reason why the museum doesn't have a hall of European and White American peoples, huh? this also entails then that the latter are, according to this ethnocentric view, somehow different to all the other peoples on Earth (different or simply superior?? probably the latter, in the mind of the organizers of this place)... now, if you read on their website, what they say is the following:

"The founding of the Museum’s anthropology program in 1873 is linked by many with the origins of research anthropology in the United States. With the enthusiastic financial support of Museum President Morris K. Jesup, Boas undertook to document and preserve the record of human cultural variation before it disappeared under the advance of Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Their expeditions resulted in the formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries of the core of the Museum’s broad and outstanding collection of artifacts."

So this seems to be the idea: let's eliminate all this diversity that bothers our line of businesses, but let's put it on a museum so that we can be considered philanthropists... Nice!!!

And then, there isn't a single hall in the museum dedicated to plants, their history, their diversity, etc. there is some tree here and there, but nothing that deserves commentary.

And finally, if you pay general admission you don't get to see the really spectacular shows in the museum (because this is their idea of museum: spectacle)... for those really expensive shows, like cosmic collisions, or temporary exhibits, you have to pay supplements that can raise your day in the museum to almost $40 to $50...

The AMNH might be, as some say, one of the most famous and acclamated museums in the whole world, but I think the conception as a museum is old and to a large extent cheesy, and it would need a lot of improvement to deserve that acclamation.