Spring Arts - Museums: Exhibitions from a birthday to the Boss

Visitors to the region's non-art museums will have a particularly eclectic array of exhibitions and programs to choose from this spring - from a celebration of the 200th birthday of America's oldest natural history museum to an examination of Bruce Springsteen, Founding Boss, at the nation's only museum devoted to the U.S. Constitution.

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls will make an appearance in town, and the clock is already ticking on an examination of the Mayan obsession with time. Museum shows and programs also will explore genealogy; pickpockets, prostitutes, and other 19th-century entrepeneurs; and the life and times of Robert Smalls, an enslaved South Carolina house servant who became a U.S. representative.

It also appears that the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, closed for three years for renovations and expansion, will at last begin a phased reopening this spring. On Feb. 15 the museum, official repository of the city's material culture, is scheduled to open two small front galleries. The entire three-story museum, on South Seventh Street near Market Street, will reopen in late June, says its chief executive, Charles Croce.

- Stephan Salisbury, Inquirer culture writer

Spring Arts - Museums:

"From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen" (National Constitution Center, Feb. 17-Sept. 3) The Constitution Center will host a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame show celebrating Bruce Springsteen's "commitment to illuminating the struggles and triumphs of 'We the People.' " Photos, scrapbooks, handwritten lyric sheets, the Boss' Fender Esquire featured on the cover of Born to Run (plus his duds from the same cover), and the 1993 Oscar he won for best original song ("Streets of Philadelphia"). (215-409-6600 or http://www.constitutioncenter.org)

"The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery" (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, opens March 24) To mark its bicentennial, the academy will mount a yearlong exhibition to celebrate its past and ongoing research and collecting. A giant skeleton of the now-extinct Irish elk will greet visitors to the show. Special programs will run concurrently, including a series by the academy's Center for Environmental Policy on issues of sustainability and the environment. (215-299-1000 or http://www.ansp.org)