The stuff of dreams

Early European sailors told of sirens and sea serpents, monsters that made their way onto ancient maps at a time when terra incognita still denoted uncharted lands. Medieval tapestries recorded images of unicorns, and the literature of the Middle Ages is replete with knights in search of dragons. Today, moviegoers flock to see Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and children are delighted by Harry Potter's hippogriff and Disney's little mermaid, Ariel. Fact or phantasm, sometimes even a little of both, such beings are as old and enduring as imagination itself.

Here to explore the anthropological origins and cultural significance of some of the world's most enchanting mythological characters is the American Museum of Natural History's new exhibition Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids, on view from May 26 through January 6, 2008. The exhibition can truly be called fabulous fun for the whole family. It highlights such supposed denizens of land, sea, and air as dragons, griffins, mermaids, sea serpents, and unicorns, with models that have to be seen to be believed, among them a 17-foot-long dragon; the mythical bird of prey, the roc, with a 19-foot wing span; and a kraken, the multi-armed, ship-foundering sea monster, its massive two-foot-diameter tentacles surfacing all through the hall.

Fantastic creatures have been part of human experience for thousands of years, passed down through legends and fables, ancient and contemporary art, performances, and even in the accounts of early naturalists. Mythic Creatures will showcase sculptures, paintings, textiles, and other cultural objects from around the world ranging from representational shadow puppets and ceremonial masks to a spectacular Japanese samurai suit of armor that bears the image of a dragon as a symbol of the wearer's power.

Mythic Creatures will also investigate how some fossils, through misidentification, speculation, and imagination, could have been taken as proof of the existence of legendary beasts. Visitors will learn, for example, how Scythian nomads, on their quest for gold in the Gobi Desert, were likely to have come across dinosaur bones that would have bolstered their belief in the existence of the gold-guarding griffin, a legendary creature with the body of a lion and head and wings of an eagle, often portrayed on heraldic shields and coats of arms.

In a reverse twist, some tales of undersea monsters may have resulted from glimpses of living sea creatures that are just as fantastic as any imaginary beast, including the giant squid and the oarfish. Even the curious manatee is said to have inspired the report by Christopher Columbus in Haiti in i493 that mermaids were "not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they look like men."

Mythic creatures are the product of human imagination, and this exhibition will bring to light surprising similarities--and differences--in the ways peoples throughout time and across cultures have envisioned and represented these strange and wonderful beings, telling us as much about the people who imagined them as about the creatures themselves.

The exhibition is co-curated by Mark Norell, Curator in the Division of Paleontology; Laurel Kendall, Curator in the Division of Anthropology; and Richard Ellis, Research Associate, and is designed and produced by the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Exhibition.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with The Field Museum, Chicago; Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau; Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney; and Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta. Mythic Creatures is proudly supported by MetLife Foundation.