Nairobi’s National Museum – Kenya
Nairobi’s National Museum is currently housed at the above building in Nairobi. It is soon moving to a much larger building closer to the airport.
The entrance path currently goes through a sculpture garden with carvings like the above, along with metal sculptures, and includes a large dinosaur with a fun polka dot textured surface.
Inside the museum, there are many taxidermied animals as well as skeletons and other info about the local animals. There is a large, albeit bedraggled, bird display hall with rows of display cases with local birds identified using hand-typed notes. While much of the museum’s space is dedicated to the animal life of Kenya, it also has several good displays on the history and culture of Kenya, such as the banking system’ development (make sure to see the giant paper bank ledger, which was used before computers took over such tasks), a gallery of Joy Adamson artwork, children’s toys, cultural dress items, fossils, and more.
Several different displays (and the galleries walls/ceilings themselves) are all at some level of disrepair (probably because of the impending move), but with a fair amount of information on signs (like the above, my favorite snippet), the museum can be enjoyed by people with any common interest. With the upcoming upgrade in location, the displays should be really varied as there is much more space to show much that is currently in storage.
For more info on things to do in Nairobi, click here.
