Boston Museum of Science

I think enough time has passed between now and my previous write-up of the Harvard Museum of Natural History that I can post the other big museum I visited during my adventures in Massachusetts, in the summer of 2025. It’s in Boston proper, just about, less than three miles down the road from the Harvard museum in Cambridge, giving the people of greater Boston several quality museums to choose from. It follows that both museums would do well to differentiate themselves from one another.

Charmingly, the Boston Museum of Science is built on a bridge, right on top of the Charles River. What’s nice about the museum is that, by American standards, it’s actually quite easy to reach by public transport. It has a dedicated stop on the T, the Boston transit system. The museum as an institution stems from 1830, while its current building on the Lechmere Viaduct was opened in 1951. Arguably it was the USA’s first holistic science museum, covering subjects from natural history to space travel to electricity to the human mind.

The T. rex in front tells us what we’re in for. Dinosaurs are by no means the only focus of the museum, but they’re always good at getting people through the door! As a lover of vintage dinosaurs, it makes a great first impression. 

This T. rex model was built in the 1960s, and inside the museum you can see a video on how it was transported to its current location. Even though it’s dated, I love that it’s still there in its original state. It does seem like it’s got a paint job in the mean time.

Of course, the main question on my mind was how this dinosaur museum was different from the nearby dinosaur museum I’d visited earlier in the week. Would they complement each other, or would they cover much of the same ground? The big, cool, spacious hall immediately gives off a completely different vibe to the smaller-scale Harvard museum. I get the impression of a modern museum that emphasizes experience. We’ll see if that plays out inside.

It’s hard to see well on photo, but in this central hall is an installation based on the science of hydrography. A complex shape dangles on many strings, pushed and pulled down according to complex calculations as well as random movements. The result is something that simulates the waves on the water in a way that is mesmerizing to look at. It really does look like a flowing wave. The juxtaposition with the actual Charles River makes it feel like a tribute to the museum’s location. Let’s head to the right and start our visit proper!

The West hall here is a great big hall with three floors and many different exhibitions. A big globe serves as the centrepiece to a hall that has lots going on, on many floors.

The Dinosaur exhibit is part of this complex, on the lower floor. From the balcony, we can already get a nice view of the modern life-sized T. rex model. It’s already quite a contrast with the sixties T. rex outside!

Not that we’re not still getting plenty of vintage dinosaur models. This big sauropod is situated near the entrance of the Dinosaur exhibit. It looks like it could be a holdover from the sixties, as well. No word on the sculptor or the actual vintage, though. The plaque dedicates something to one Francis A. Foster, who appears to have been a historian in Boston. I don’t know if the dedication extends to this dinosaur!

The West hall is very open, and it’s not quite clear where one exhibition begins and another ends. On the ground floor, in the middle, there’s all kinds of geological and natural history related objects and fossils on display, while the dinosaur exhibit proper is off in a corner of its own. You have to love a nice ammonite.

From the ground level, the T. rex model looks even more impressive. This one stems from 2001, and for the vintage, it is pretty good. By modern standards it could be read as a little thin and shinkwrapped, especially with that pubic bone sticking out. I like the correctly clapping hands and the soft tissue around the mouth, though. I really like the lumpy head ornamentations. For a big T. rex, it’s surprisingly friend-shaped. And it’s got a good paint job that reminds me a lot of the work of Dmirty Bogdanov, he of the many Wikipedia reconstructions. All in all, a good eye catcher that holds up well.

The introductory text to the exhibit emphasizes the way modeling and art bring dinosaurs to life, in lieu of us being able to see them for real. Well, that’s right up my alley! It justifies an exhibition that is, honestly, fairly light on actual spectacular fossils, so the modelwork and art have to do a lot of heavy lifting here.

The hall has two mounted dinosaur skeletons. Strangely, they are both of Triceratops. This one is a real Triceratops horridus skeleton from the Hell Creek, and the only real proper actual dinosaur mount at the museum. I’ve been quite spoiled on Triceratops skeletons recently, but this is a very fine specimen. A young adult, if I’m any judge. It’s named Cliff, and it’s said to be “one of the most complete” Triceratops ever found, though given how common they are I don’t know how much that narrows things down. I do love a mount that you can see from different angles.

This one is a much older Triceratops, a historical model. The differences between both are quite stark, with this one much more smooth and shiny, the real one more rough and textured, and in a more action-packed pose. It does put the differences between the real fossil and the model into focus, which emphasizes the focus of the exhibition as a whole.

More models: A T. rex (based, I think, on the New York specimen) face to face with another giant theropod, Giganotosaurus, showing just how different the two are. The signage mostly invites the visitor to engage in some comparative anatomy, but we all know what the real question is that is implicitly being asked here. Not that it matters, but my money has to be on T. rex, which is probably twice as wide!

The models are framed by a nice dinosaur family tree. The artwork seems to be from Larry Felder, though I’m not seeing an accreditation anywhere. It’s an important detail that both T. rex and Giganotosaurus make their appearance on the tree, so we can learn just how distantly related they are.

This is the corner of interesting palaeoart. There’s a couple of pretty cool murals on the wall here. I haven’t been able to make out the signatures, though. They look like they were made around the turn of the millennium (probably the same time as the T. rex model) by a disciple of the Greg Paul school of palaeoart. If anyone knows who, please let me know!

There are glass cases displaying dinosaur models of varying quality and up-to-date-ness. I’ll show some of them in close up later. There’s also a handful of terrariums, for some reason, displaying hissing cockroaches and dart frogs. Live animals do often give a little bit of extra cachet to a natural history museum, even if they don’t match that well with the rest of the exhibit.

More comparative anatomy. Emphasizing the dinosaur-bird lineage is always a plus in an exhibit like this…

Once again, I think I recognize the hand of Larry Felder here, but there’s no credits. Someone (maybe Larry himself) will have to tell me if I’m right.

Here’s one of the little dinosaur models, a very cool retro Stegosaurus. I do wish the museum did a little more to separate historical models out from modern, up to date ones. For all that the exhibit claims to be about dinosaur models, we don’t hear that much about the art, craft and history of dinosaur model making, a subject I’m of course very interested in.

The Compsognathus model is probably the most striking thing on display here, perhaps for the wrong reasons. It’s got a great big head with a hilariously furious face. Depending on its vintage we should probably excuse the featherlessness, but by today’s standards it is not only too reptilian, but too anthropomorphized. A funny object, nonetheless. The Peter Zallinger green-and-tan colour scheme feels like a throwback, too.

Real fossils are not forgotten, though apart from the one Triceratops the museum doesn’t actually have that much in terms of fossil dinosaur material. I believe I saw another Eryops at the museum, having already seen half a dozen of the blessed things at Harvard, so if Eryops happens to be your favourite prehistoric critter, Boston is the place for you.

Another charmingly aged pair of models in a Nyctosaurus diorama. This was back when the idea of Nyctosaurus having some sort of membranous sail was considered a viable hypothesis. That places this diorama, along with the big T. rex and the rest of the exhibit, around the early 2000s. Fascinating how quickly things can age in the dinosaur world. Still, they are nice, striking, colourful pterosaurs, cool to look at.

Is the Dinosaur exhibit of the Boston Museum of Science different enough from the Harvard NHM to warrant its existence so close by? I’d say: yes. Both museums are spectacular in their own right, but the Boston MOS places greater emphasis on models and immersion, while the Harvard NHM mostly lets the fossils do the talking. If you find yourself in Boston, I can only recommend you visit both, but if you have to pick only one museum between the two, I’d say… Harvard if you only care about the natural history stuff, Boston MOS if you want a more complete day out.

I’ve got tons of photographs of the Boston Museum of Science. There’s a lot of different things to see and do, which is why I consider it a complete day out. I’ve seen exhibitions on space travel, the future of technology, optical illusions, more natural history stuff and the famous electricity show. I really enjoyed my time in Boston, and dinosaurs are always a great added value to any journey. I could do with a clam chowder right now.