Dennis Finnin / © AMNH
The American Museum of Natural History’s Origami Holiday Tree returns on Monday, November 23, and this year’s decorations have an athletic streak.
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The 13-foot tree is built around the theme of “animal athletes,” a nod to what the museum calls a momentous year in sports, both around the world and here in New York City. The new paper models feature creatures known for impressive physical feats, including hummingbirds, cheetahs, ants and flying fish.They’ll join a collection of more than 1,000 origami models on the tree. That collection includes folded versions of some of the museum’s most famous residents, like the T. rex and the Blue Whale.
The tree is produced in partnership with OrigamiUSA, and every model on it is folded by hand by origami artists from New York, across the country and around the world.
The tree’s roots go back to the early 1970s, when Alice Gray, an entomologist at the museum, decorated a three-foot tree in her office with origami insects. Word of it reached a museum trustee, and her tree went on to inspire the first official Origami Holiday Tree in 1972. OrigamiUSA’s Rosalind Joyce, who told ILTUWS in 2024 that she’s contributed since that first year, has co-designed the tree in recent years with fellow volunteer Talo Kawasaki. The museum has said the designers fill the tree with new models along with older ones pulled from ten large boxes saved from past years.
You’ll find the tree in the Ellen V. Futter Gallery on the first floor of the museum, at 200 Central Park West.
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