Museum sights in Southwest
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American International Rattlesnake Museum
If you've ever been curious about serpents, this is the museum for you. It's possibly the most interesting museum in town, and you won't find more species of rattlesnake in one place anywhere else in the world. Come here for the lowdown on one of the world's most misunderstood snakes.
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Heard Museum
This extraordinary museum is a magical mystery tour through the history, life, arts and culture of Native American tribes in the Southwest. It emphasizes quality over quantity and is one of the best museums of its kind in America.
There are rooms of ethnographic displays, art galleries, a get-creative kids exhibit and an unrivaled Hopi kachina gallery (many of the pieces were a gift from Barry Goldwater). Most disturbing is the Boarding School Experience gallery about the controversial federal policy of removing Native American children from their families and sending them to remote boarding schools in order to 'Americanize' them. Overall, allow two to three hours to…
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Union Station
This old train houses three small museums dedicated to antique autos, natural history and firearms.
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Ogden Eccles Dinosaur Park
Prepare for your children to squeal as a couple of animatronic dinosaurs roar to life inside the museum at Ogden Eccles Dinosaur Park. Outside, it's like a giant playground where you can run around, under and over life-size plaster-of-Paris dinosaurs.
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Arizona Museum for Youth
The primary mission of the Arizona Museum for Youth is to get little ones excited about fine art through hands-on activities. There’s even a special room for toddlers where they can play with giant crayons or build their own colorful garden.
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Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
Primarily showing work by the students and faculty of the esteemed Institute of American Indian Arts, this place also has the finest contemporary offerings of Native American artists from tribes across the US. It's an excellent place to see cutting-edge art and understand its role in modern Native American culture.
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University of Arizona Museum of Art
Across the road from the CCP, peruse 500 years of European and American paintings and sculpture. The permanent collection features such heavy hitters as Rodin, Matisse, Picasso and Pollock.
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Museum of Moab
On a rainy day you might want to check out the regional exhibits – on everything from paleontology and geology to uranium mining and Native American art.
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Harwood Foundation Museum
Housed in a historic mid-19th-century adobe compound, the Harwood Foundation Museum features paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and photography by northern New Mexican artists, both historical and contemporary. Founded in 1923, the Harwood has been run by the University of New Mexico since 1936 and underwent a major renovation in 1997. It is the second-oldest museum in New Mexico, and one of its most important when it comes to art collections.
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Bryce Museum
Visit this barnlike natural history museum – with more than 400 taxidermied animals, butterflies, and Native American artifacts – then feed the feral deer and other animals in the yards surrounding. West of the park.
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Utah Museum of Natural History
The massive Rio Tinto Center makes a suitable home for the museum's prize Huntington Mammoth, one of the most complete fossils of its kind in the world. After taking a hiatus, it and other Utah-found objects and fossils are once again on display – in a shiny new museum building.
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Yavapai Geology Museum & Observation Station
Views don't get much better than those unfolding behind the plate-glass windows of this little stone building at Yavapai Point, where handy panels identify and explain the various formations before you. Another reason to swing by is the superb geology display that'll deepen your understanding of the canyon's multilayered geological palimpsest. From here, check out the new Trail of Time exhibit just west of the Rim Trail. This interpretative display traces the history of the canyon's formation, and every meter equals one million years of geologic history.
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Red Cliffs Adventure Lodge
This lodge, 15 miles northeast of town, hosts the Moab Museum of Film & Western Heritage, showing Hollywood memorabilia and posters from all the films shot in the area. There's also a tasting and sales room for its on-site winery.
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Tusayan Museum
At the South Rim you can pause to walk around the 800-year-old pueblo ruins: Start at the Tusayan Museum.
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Utah Museum of Fine Arts
Soaring galleries showcase permanent collections of tribal, Western and modern art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
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Clark Planetarium
You'll be seeing stars at Clark Planetarium, home to the latest and greatest 3-D sky shows and Utah's only IMAX theater. There are free science exhibits, too. The planetarium is on the edge of the Gateway, a combination indoor-outdoor shopping complex anchored by the old railway depot.
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Museum of Church History & Art
Adjoining Temple Square, this museum has impressive exhibits of pioneer history and fine art.
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Phoenix Art Museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is Arizona's premier repository of fine art. Galleries include works by Claude Monet, Diego Rivera and Georgia O'Keeffe. The striking landscapes in the Western American gallery will get you in the mind-set for adventure. Take kids to the ingeniously crafted miniature period rooms in the Thorne Rooms, borrow a family audio guide or a KidPack, or visit the PhxArtKids Gallery (see www.phxartkids.org).
Grown-ups might want to join the free guided tours at noon, 1pm and 2pm. The museum's contemporary Arcadia Farms Café is a great place to grab a meal, and it's not only for museum-goers.
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Turquoise Museum
At this museum visitors get an enlightening crash course in determining the value of stones – from high quality to fakes. Joe Dan Lowry, the turquoise expert who owns the museum, is as opinionated as he is knowledgeable, so you're in for an interesting time!
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Yavapai Observation Station
At the northeastern end of the village, panoramic views of the canyon unfold at Yavapai Observation Station, which has an intriguing geology museum.
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Dan O’Laurie Museum
Between breakfast and dinner there’s not much activity in Moab. On a rainy day, you might check out the dinosaur and mining exhibits at the Dan O’Laurie Museum.
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UA Museum of Art
At the UA Museum of Art you can clap eyes on 500 years of European and American paintings and sculpture featuring such heavy hitters such as Rembrandt, Goya, Matisse and Picasso.
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National Automobile Museum
Stylized street scenes illustrate a century's worth of automobile history at this engaging car museum. The collection is enormous and impressive, with one-of-a-kind vehicles including James Dean's 1949 Mercury from Rebel Without a Cause, a 1938 Phantom Corsair and a 24-karat gold-plated DeLorean, and rotating exhibits bringing in all kinds of souped-up or fabulously retro rides.
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Center for Creative Photography
The CCP is known for its ever-changing, high-caliber exhibits and for administering the archives of Ansel Adams, perhaps the best-regarded landscape photographer in American history. The museum closes down between exhibits for an extended period, so check the website before visiting.
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Pioneer Memorial Museum
You'll find relics from the early days at Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) museums throughout Utah, but the Pioneer Memorial Museum is by far the biggest. The vast, four-story treasure trove is like Utah's attic, with a taxidermy two-headed lamb and human-hair artwork in addition to more predictable artifacts.
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