I adore New York's American Museum of Natural History, but the curse of that is always being slightly disappointed when I go to any other city's natural history museum. Not so in DC. I had to be dragged out of there. Not only was it crammed with well sculpted animals and displays, but it also had the same odd mix of current science with a wonderful 1950s aesthetic to what makes something look scientific and forward thinking -- which basically means lots of hexagons and "cell" shapes in muted tertiary colors, with signage that was clearly hand cut and applied.I'm inexplicably fasicinated by mounted (wrongly called "stuffed") animal displays. The AMNH cannot be beat on this, but in DC there was a lot of emphasis given to the movement of the animals. The only thing it was laking was some breathing-room between displays.