This article is part of the Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on how creativity can inspire in challenging times.
Arranging suitable accommodations for an unexpected visitor can be a challenge, especially when the guest is 11 feet tall and 27 feet long. The American Museum of Natural History has done it twice in less than a year for one of the world’s largest and most complete stegosaurus skeletons.
The skeleton, aptly named Apex, is on loan to the museum. It includes about 80 percent of the dinosaur’s estimated 320 fossilized bones.
The time from discovery to display was so swift that the museum was challenged to find space suitable for showing it — though there was never a doubt it would do so. “To get something this complete, in such good shape, is very rare,” said Melissa Posen, senior director of exhibition operations at the New York museum.
The museum first installed Apex last December in an atrium of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, five months after the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin bought the 150 million-year-old fossil at auction for $44.6 million, about 10 times the presale estimate. The display gave the public an opportunity to see the elephant-size skeleton, with its distinctive rows of bony plates along both sides of its spine, but there was not enough time for museum staff to prepare informational and educational exhibits, or for paleontologists to fully examine individual fossils.
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