page_title: American Museum of Natural History
section_title: Milstein Hall of Ocean Life
hierarchical_section_title: American Museum of Natural History / Biodiversity and environmental halls / Milstein Hall of Ocean Life
caption_attribution_description: English: The full-size model of a Blue Whale suspended in the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life in the American Museum of Natural History, New York.
context_page_description: The American Museum of Natural History, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2 million square feet. The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.
  The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
context_section_description: The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life focuses on marine biology, botany and marine conservation. The hall is most famous for its 94-foot (29 m)-long blue whale model, suspended from the ceiling behind its dorsal fin.
  The upper level of the hall exhibits the vast array of ecosystems present in the ocean. Dioramas compare and contrast the life in these different settings including polar seas, kelp forests, mangroves, coral reefs and the bathypelagic. It attempts to show how vast and varied the oceans are while encouraging common themes throughout. The lower, and arguably more famous, half of the hall consists of several large dioramas of larger marine organisms. It is on this level that the famous "Squid and the Whale" diorama sits, depicting a hypothetical fight between the two creatures. Other notable exhibits in this hall include the Andros Coral Reef Diorama, which is the only two-level diorama in the Western Hemisphere. One of the most famous icons of the museum is a life-sized fiberglass model of a 94 foot (29 m) long Atlantic blue whale. The whale was redesigned dramatically in the 2003 renovation: its flukes and fins were readjusted, a navel was added, and it was repainted from a dull gray to various rich shades of blue. Upper dioramas are smaller versions of the ecosystems when the bottom versions are much bigger and more life like.
caption: Model of a blue whale in the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life
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