It's only natural. Bell Museum celebrating 150 years, and I finally take a tour

Jan. 28—The Bell Museum has a great origins story. It began in 1872 as a "one-room cabinet of curiosities."

Today, the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum of natural history has a sleek, fascinating home on the University's St. Paul campus and plans to celebrate 150 years with exhibits and experiences throughout 2022.

Sounds like it's about time I got to the Bell. I was embarrassed to tell Bell staff that although I live just three miles from the museum, and my family has a pet name for the woolly mammoth diorama that can be seen from the Bell window on Larpenteur Avenue (we always yell, "Hi, Todd!" when we pass, thanks to a great-niece who also named a backyard squirrel Todd) — I'd never been farther inside than the gift shop and lobby.

Adrienne Wiseman, director of business and marketing at the Bell, assured me I wasn't alone. She often runs into people who say they've been meaning to stop in. And it was time to take me on a tour.

The Bell, Minnesota's official natural history museum, got its start when "the state was just a baby," Wiseman said in the lobby of the museum's "new" home, which opened in 2018.

Minnesota was entering its 14th year of statehood when the Bell was officially founded on Feb. 29, 1872. As the museum grew, it bounced around various buildings on the University of Minnesota Campus, spending most of its years (1940-2017) on the Minneapolis campus at 10 Church St. S.E. In the 1960s, it was named for James Ford Bell, the founder and chairman of General Mills, who was also an early conservationist and the major benefactor.

Wiseman points out that the Bell is a hands-on museum, and that's obvious from the "Touch and See Lab" on the first floor. Visitors can touch bones and fur and look into a microscope and marvel at the size of a whale vertebrae. Try to guess the size of an animal's brain (I learned I am correct in arguments with my cat when I tell him he has a brain the size of a walnut), see snakeskins, turtle shells, bones, rocks, antlers. The Bell has 4,000 items in its education collection, Wiseman says.

"The museum's bread and butter is families," Wiseman says, lots of grandparents and grandkids. "It's an easy place to visit with kids. Very welcoming. They can touch everything."

Entering the Touch and See Lab, kids are asked about a huge, prehistoric-looking bone. Dinosaur? It's an elephant skull. There's an array of bones (some real and some models) that visitors can, well, touch and see.

Planetarium

We didn't go inside for stargazing, but Wiseman says the shows in the museum's planetarium are Bell originals. And every show is led by a person, so there's opportunity for questions and discussions.

The planetarium is also a unique location for weddings "under the stars," with a room for receptions nearby Wiseman says, but that's been shut down for a while due to COVID.

Minnesota Journeys

The Bell's history is closely associated with the nature dioramas on the museum's second floor — known as Minnesota Journeys. The old Bell museum on the University's Minneapolis campus grew as exhibits were added. The new building was planned and designed for the exhibits, Wiseman says.

PHOTOS: Thousands turn out for new Bell Museum's grand opening

And it shows. The nature scenes are detailed and set behind exhibit glass so clear, you feel like you could reach out and pet a crouching wolf or scratch an elk's back. The dioramas were refurbished and moved to the new museum.

The dioramas of hunting wolves, a moose in the muck, sandhill cranes and seven others take visitors on a nature tour from the north end of Minnesota to the south. "We always say you can see the whole state in a day," Wiseman says.

Most states have just one biome, a large community of plants and animals. Minnesota has three biomes, according to Wiseman. They're represented in the dioramas.

Making your way to the dioramas, fascinating displays illustrate relationships between things, right down to the cell level. How people, plants, animals and birds change. What does DNA tell us about a species? "The Bell is more about asking the questions than having the answers," Wiseman says.

Heck, even the old high school chemistry class favorite the Periodic Table gets interesting in its own display.

The dioramas start with the full-size woolly mammoth (you know, Todd) and his pals in the Ice Age Exhibit. Just to the side of Todd is a giant beaver that often surprises visitors as much as the Woolly One, Wiseman says. It's huge. And go around to the back of the exhibit and through an arch into a room showing a video created for the Bell by renowned nature photographer Jim Brandenburg.

The north-to-south diorama journey starts with "Moose at Gunflint Lake" in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in late September. Lily pads, gnarled tree roots and marshy muck at the edge of the forest are the setting for what appears to be a moose family, with papa lifting his hoof out of the mud.

Next stop: "Wolves at Shovel Point." Wiseman says she likes to ask visitors what they think the wolves are focused on. Most point to a bird in a nearby tree, but look closely, there's a deer in the distance. Shovel Point is on the shore of Lake Superior in what is now Tettegouche State Park.

In the next diorama, it's "Spring at Cascade River." The focus is more on the river than on the creatures in the foreground — a fawn, an owl, lots of birds. The detail on the forest floor is amazing, with dried leaves amid bright green plants starting to emerge.

On to Otter Tail County, to see "Elk at Inspiration Peak," the highest point in the county and one of the highest points in the state. It's an autumn scene with elk above the oak savannah of western Minnesota. Look closely to see the late-blooming wildflowers and butterflies.

"Cranes in the Red River Valley" depicts more than 100 sandhill cranes gathering just outside Fertile, Minn., a pit stop on their annual migration in May. Look closely and you'll see they're not all sandhill cranes. There are also whooping cranes, Wiseman says, which used to mass in the thousands, but were nearly extinct, with only 15 surviving in the wild in 1941. You can see an example of a whooping crane up close in a nearby exhibit case.

Continuing the tour, "Beavers at Lake Itasca" are, well, busy as you-know what in late spring, gnawing a tree, stacking branches for a dam at the headwaters of the Mississippi near Park Rapids. According to Bell info, this diorama was completed in 1919 and is the oldest in the current Bell Museum. Wonder what they'd do if that big beaver fella from the Ice Age diorama showed up?

Farther down the Mississippi between Red Wing and Wabasha, "Lake Pepin's Sand Point" has more than 20 species of birds flapping and perching. You can almost feel the wet sand, and it's not hard to imagine the caws and cries in the wind.

A path cuts through "Big Woods," with springtime trampled leaves, wildflowers, ducks and it appears some woodland creature has burrowed into the dirt off to the side. Though Minnesota once had many more big woods, this one at Maplewood Park in Waseca is still intact. Wiseman says you can visit this actual location.

It's another migration pit stop in "Snow Geese at Lake Traverse" on the southwest Minnesota/South Dakota border. (Yes, we did traverse the state on this diorama tour.) The sometimes-squabbling snow geese in the diorama are resting up to continue their journey to their summer breeding grounds in the Arctic.

Last stop is "Tundra Swans on the Minnesota River Valley." Another migrating group, the swans in the diorama are headed to the Arctic. Wiseman says the river valley area depicted in the scene is near what is now Mall of America.

The skies, the sunlight, the animals in motion, the muck or wet sand or dry grasses. "Everything is in the details, and that's where they get it really, really right," Wiseman says.

And to have waited this long to tour the Bell was, on my part, really, really wrong. But I'll be back. Perhaps for one of the special events celebrating 150 years.

The Bell's yearlong celebration

Through Oct. 2: "Seeing Birds" — Gives visitors a chance to explore birds, their environments and their evolution.

Feb. 3-6: "Space Fest" The fourth annual Space Fest returns to in-person this year with hands-on activities, conversations with astronomy experts from NASA and first look at the Bell's original production "Mars: the Ultimate Voyage."

April 7-9: "Statewide Star Party" — Third annual Minnesota Statewide Star Party involves schools, colleges, libraries, museums, parks and other local organizations with family-friendly events that include free outdoor sky-watching.

July 19-Aug. 14: "Gaia" — U.K. artist Luke Jerram's installation "Museum of the Moon" was in the Bell lobby in 2019. This is another piece from Jerram, showing Earth from a perspective as if you were in space.

Bell Museum

— When: Celebrating 150 years in 2022, currently open Wednesdays through Sundays. Closed select holidays.

— Where: 2088 W. Larpenteur Ave., St. Paul

— Admission: $12 adults, $10 seniors, $9 ages 3-21, 2 and younger free, U of M students free.

— Info: 612-626-9660 or bellmuseum.umn.edu