MOAS Blog

Witness the pride, sacrifice, and humanity of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan through this traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian, featuring 100 oil portraits. Representing a cross-section of home states, military branches, jobs, and backgrounds, every portrait includes a candid first-hand account of war.

Fungi - The Fun-Guys of the Phylogentic Tree

Although Tuscawilla nature preserve is closed to the public, some of us (MOAS staff) like to trek through the hydric hammock to stretch our legs during lunch breaks or that mid-afternoon lull. During our miniature expeditions, we have stumbled upon some interesting developments; freshly fallen cypress trees from recent hurricanes, massive elephant ear plants that remind us of Jurassic Park, or an apocalyptic number of mosquitoes from an above average amount of rainfall...

Mars Attacks!

A special event will delight night sky observers this summer: the opposition of Mars. Opposition is sort of a fancy way of saying that Mars will be on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, so we will have an alignment of the three objects in space. Oppositions with Mars happen very regularly and frequently, about once every 2 years (or 780 Earth days to be exact)...

History of the Fourth of July

The 4th of July is one of our country’s patriotic celebrations. Work on the document that led to it officially becoming a federal holiday began on June 11, 1776. The Colonies' Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and formed a committee whose express purpose was drafting a document that would formally sever the thirteen colonies' ties with Great Britain...

Latest Blog Posts

Robo-Car Race Track

The GE Volunteers have completed the installation of one of the larger hands-on exhibits in the Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum at MOAS – the new Robo-Car Race Track. This was accomplished with the expert assistance of Alphagraphics, a local printing and graphics business. The new exhibit features self-steering robot cars that visitors...

Role Reversal: How Paintings and Photography Switched Roles in the 20th Century

It is hard to over-estimate the influence of photography on the development of art since the 19th-century. Although camera obscura image projection had been known since ancient times, 1839 marks the year photography was introduced to the public through the daguerreotype, the first photographic process to require only minutes to achieve an image. Soon photographers were turning their cameras towards all types of subject...

Discovering the Glyptodont

It is hard to imagine that the glyptodont, the giant creature with a likeness to an armadillo on display in the Museum's Prehistory of Florida Gallery, has any relationship to the giant ground sloth. Amazingly, they are cousins and have evolved tens of millions of years ago from a common ancestor in South America...

Think Big: Large Scale Events at MOAS

The Museum's Education Department has a long history of creating and hosting large events and festivals of all kinds. These mission-driven events follow a curriculum of art, science, and history, or a combination of all three. Planning begins months in advance and involves multiple departments and personnel from the Museum. It is always a team effort between the education department, marketing and public relations, curatorial...