The University of Nebraska State Museum took me right back to my earliest days of visiting museums as a kid. The look, layout, and even many of the displays felt like they hadn’t been updated since the 80s. This might sound like a drawback, but I absolutely loved it. It reminded me so much of the Morris Museum in New Jersey, where my grandparents used to take me. The ceilings were low, it was dimly lit in places, but overall had a sense of quiet coziness to it that made it feel like home. The museum’s most famous display is the “Archie the Mastodon” skeleton (who walks among an entire family of Mastodons of various sizes. Quite a sight! The Stegosaurus here has the old outdated tail-dragging pose, but the signs around it go out of their way to explain that new findings have rendered the dinosaur’s pose obsolete. At the end of the day, even though some aspects of this museum are technically inaccurate, I wouldn’t change a thing. The place a real charmer!
Lincoln, NE – University of Nebraska State Museum
