This weekend at the Museum: MicroRangers, Antarctic Ice, and Origami Classes!

Have you been planning on taking a trip to the American Museum of Natural History? Here are 3 events that make this weekend the perfect time for a visit:

Game On! MicroRangers Competition - Sunday, April 17

MicroRangers is a new mobile game at the Museum that shrinks you down to microscopic size and sends you into exhibits to combat threats to biodiversity. Join the MicroRangers Competition at the Museum on April 17th to win prizes including toys, games, and a chance to win a Night at the Museum sleepover!

OrigamiUSA Special Folding Fun Sessions - Sunday, April 17

Share the beauty and wonder of folding paper! Highly skilled teachers from OrigamiUSA will lead "Special Folding Fun Sessions" at the Museum, with up to 10 classes throughout the day on all folding levels, including a family class! Learn to fold animals, stars, action models, and much more.

Beneath the Ice: Immersive Dome Installation - Open all weekend

Take a deep dive into Antarctic waters to explore a hidden world beneath the ice. This immersive dome experience, located in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, showcases a surprising and visually stunning array of marine life that flourishes on, around, and underneath the Antarctic ice.

The world’s most amazing ecosystems are in danger, and it’s up to you to save them! That’s the premise of MicroRangers, a new mobile game for Android and iOS smartphones that uses augmented reality to turn the Museum’s first floor into a series of animated adventures that highlight how microbial life can impact the health and security of all life on Earth.

“Most biodiversity is too small to be seen without a microscope. But those microbes are just as important as other forms of life in keeping ecosystems healthy,” says Susan Perkins, who advised on MicroRangers and is co-curator of The Secret World Inside You exhibition about the human microbiome.

Game play begins in the Hall of Biodiversity, which serves as a sort of home base. From there, players are dispatched to solve science-based mysteries in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, Hall of North American Forests, and the Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals, with directions, clues, and three-dimensional animations popping up on their phones, offering a different way to interact with even the most familiar exhibits.

Augmented reality coins, available at the Membership desk in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, help bring characters in the game, like the animated scientists you meet on missions, to life.

Learn more about MicroRangers.