Near the end of May, the Field Museum’s newest rotating exhibition opened: the Pokémon Fossil Museum. (You probably figured that out from the title of the post.) Naturally, we avoided going immediately after opening due to potential crowding, opting to wait a month and visit on a weekday. That may have reduced the overall crowding at the museum; the exhibition still sold out for the day. The exhibition tickets were timed entries, we scheduled ours for mid-afternoon to avoid being rushed in our arrival or lunch.
Not having visited the Field Museum in over a decade, we knew we weren’t going to cover everything in a day, especially with a special exhibition included. We opted to precede our Pokémon exploration with a visit to the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet & SUE the T. rex, which segued pleasantly into the overlapping information at the Pokémon Fossil Museum.
But what is the Pokémon Fossil Museum? It’s an exhibit comparing special Pokémon, theoretically restored from fossils, to “ancient life from our world”. What can I say? Someone decided Pokémon should be educational, and they did a delightful job of it. Each Pokémon fossil on display was paired with something from our world, such as the combination of a Tyrantrum and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Pokémon world items were a blue background and our world had red, making it easy to distinguish between them; both included detailed explanations in English and Spanish. The T-Rex skull pictured is a replica of SUE’s, the most complete T-Rex ever found, who is housed in the Evolving Planet exhibit.
As we stepped into the special exhibition, we were each handed a Pokémon card… a reprint of an existing card, rather than a special promo one. Apparently a special promo card caused some problems at a previous location for this traveling exhibit. Each admission does get you access to the special Pokémon store across the hall, with a limit of 5 items, no repeats allowed, per admission. This includes an Excavator Pikachu plush that they seemed to have in remarkably large quantities, though everything in the store is “while supplies last.” (Some of the items are also available at the Pokémon Center.) For those of us that play Pokémon Go, there’s an Excavator Pikachu available in the game in and around the exhibit, as well as some themed stickers and themed Pokéstop/Gym images.
Sadly, due to time constraints, we did not see all of the regular exhibits or any other special exhibit that day, so I expect we’ll have to return to the Field Museum again soon to remedy that.