NYC Natural History Museum unveils origami holiday tree
NEW YORK, Nov 20: The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is bringing back its beloved Origami Holiday Tree, a long-standing Manhattan tradition that will open to the public on Monday.
Unlike the famous Rockefeller Center spruce, this 13-foot (4-metre) artificial tree is known for its intricate decorations: thousands of colourful, hand-folded paper ornaments crafted by origami artists and volunteers from around the world. The tradition has delighted museum visitors for more than 40 years.
This year’s tree theme, “New Beginnings,” draws inspiration from the museum’s exhibition Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs, which explores how an asteroid strike 66 million years ago transformed life on Earth. Co-designer Talo Kawasaki explains that the tree emphasizes not the extinction event itself, but the flourishing of new life afterward, especially the rise of mammals that ultimately led to humanity. Fittingly, the tree is topped with a golden, flaming asteroid.
The branches are densely decorated with thousands of origami models depicting a wide range of animals, including foxes, cranes, turtles, bats, sharks, elephants, giraffes, monkeys, and popular dinosaurs such as Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. Many of the models are newly created each year, with volunteers across the globe contributing hundreds of fresh pieces. Although most origami works are crafted from a single sheet of paper, some designs take days or even weeks to perfect.
The annual display also incorporates pieces from the museum’s archive of past origami trees. Among the oldest is a 40-year-old pterosaur model, originally folded for one of the earliest trees in the 1970s. Rosalind Joyce, the tree’s co-designer, estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 origami works are embedded in this year’s display. With so many intricate pieces packed into the tree, Joyce says she no longer attempts to count them. (AP)
