|
MOAS - The Museum of Arts and Sciences
MOAS makes learning fun!
Even before entering the museum, you are surrounded by nautral history. The museum sits on the Tuscawilla Preserve, a 90-acre nature preserve complete with lush landscapes, nature trails and picnic areas. Rooms that house both permanent and current collections divide the inside of the museum. The first room I entered was in the Helene B. Roberson Visible Storage wing. As the name suggests, this gallery displays museum artifacts that are not currently on display in other collections. The 4,400 square foot addition allows visitors to see imortant works from the Museum's collection in a glass-fronted, open storage format. Items from the Museum's European and American furniture collection and artifacts from the Napoleon Collection span many years and genres. The Museum of Arts & Sciences is currently housing two amazing collections that offer plenty of informative pieces. The Root Family wing gives the history of the family that created the Coca-Cola Company in 1892 with a wide range of Coca-Cola memorabilia. This wing also houses Florida’s largest collection of Teddy Bears through a display of over 800 stuffed bears that belonged to Mrs. Root. The museum even holds two of the actual train cars that the Root family used for traveling.
While the Museum of Arts & Sciences offers great exhibits for adults, it has plenty to offer children as well. The Children’s Museum is a separate wing of the main museum and houses plenty of interactive ways for children to learn while having fun. As I walked through this exhibit, the sight of children happily running around served as proof that this exhibit is popular with the younger crowd.
The Museum of Arts & Sciences offers a great way to learn about history as it related to Daytona Beach and beyond. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday and offers free admission to Volusia County residents on the first Tuesday of each month. It only takes one visit to see that Daytona Beach has much more to offer than a white sandy beach. ~Amanda Michael
|
In addition to the great beach, trendy restaurants, and plenty of other tourist locations, Daytona Beach is also home to the primary art, science and history museum in Central Florida. The Museum of Arts & Sciences offers the perfect opportunity to see collections of American, Chinese and Cuban art, plus take in some of the history surrounding the Daytona Beach area. Although I consider myself a frequent visitor of Daytona Beach, I had never visited the museum and was pleasantly surprised to discover all that the Museum of Arts & Sciences has to offer.
The Cuban exhibit of art and artifacts offers history that relates especially to the Daytona Beach area. A frequent visitor to Daytona Beach, Cuban President Fulgercio Batista, donated the historic art housed in this exhibit to the residents of Daytona Beach in the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibit houses more than 200 objects, including contemporary Cuban art, and represents 300 years of Cuban history.
One sight that is popular with both kids and adults alike is probably the most admired artifact in the Museum. The Giant Ground Sloth display features a 13-foot tall skeleton of an animal that roamed the earth years ago. While I stood in awe of the large size of the skeleton, I was even more impressed to hear that the sloth was discovered just three miles away from the museum in 1975 at an important Pleistocene fossil site called the Daytona Beach Bed.
