Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Spencer Museum of Art is showing climate change in a way that combines maps, photographs and an 18-foot-long kayak.
The museum’s newest exhibition, “Climate Change at the Poles,” blends science, art and anthropology to show changes at the earth’s North and South Poles.
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“It’s really important for students to realize and understand that art really does reference every part of our lives,” said Sierra Falter, Lincoln, Neb., senior, and president of the art museum’s Student Advisory Board.
Museum staff will give an overview of the exhibition at a gallery talk this evening at the museum. The free event starts at 6:30 p.m. and will also feature a preview of the Lawrence Arts Center’s production of “The Ice Wolf,” an Inuit legend. The production is one of many community programs associated with the climate change exhibition.
Other outreach events include a book and film series at the Lawrence Public Library and the art museum. DJ Spooky will perform “Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica,” a multimedia production about Antarctica, on March 27 at the Lied Center. Campus and community lectures have also been planned for the coming months.
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Watson Library will open a new third-floor art exhibit Feb. 12. The display will feature pieces about climate change.
Jennifer Talbott, assistant to the director, said the exhibition emphasized how people could adapt to change. It coincides with the current fourth International Polar Year, which began in March 2007 and ends in March of this year. IPY is an international scientific program that involves projects in the Arctic and Antarctic.
The exhibition was organized primarily by three museum staff members: Talbott, Kate Meyer, curatorial assistant, and Angela Watts, assistant collections manager.
The three organizers set up the museum’s north balcony gallery to represent the North Pole and the south balcony gallery to represent the South Pole.
“The north balcony is more how people live in the Arctic and the south balcony is about how people analyze the Antarctic,” Watts said.
The North Pole section contains more than 50 Inuit objects, including a polar bear suit and a kayak. The museum obtained these objects from the former Museum of Anthropology’s Ethnographic Collection, Watts said. The Inuit are an indigenous people who live in the Arctic regions of the world.
“It’s nice how we can learn from people who have dealt with challenges in places of the globe where scientists tell us change is occurring,” Meyer said.
Talbott said the South Pole section contained more than 20 items that focused on the scientific aspect of climate change. This includes tools and maps from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, or CReSIS.
The art museum and CReSIS worked together to develop the idea for the climate change exhibition. CReSIS has its headquarters at the University of Kansas.
Stephen Ingalls, associate director for CReSIS administration, said the center evaluated how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica responded to climate change and how the sheets contributed to a rise in sea level.
“It’s another avenue for us to be able to go out and communicate the challenges of climate change and to highlight the work going on at KU,” Ingalls said.
Johannes Feddema, professor of geography, said climate change was difficult to communicate because of the misconceptions surrounding the topic. Feddema, who also serves on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said people often made the mistake of seeing climate change as something to believe or not believe.
“It’s something you should look at the best evidence and see what it tells you,” Feddema said. “The museum has a way of showing this information in a nontraditional way.”
Falter said that every student could learn something from the exhibition, no matter what his or her major may be.
“Climate change is something we have to deal with for a while and the whole museum is going to encompass climate change from now until the summer,” Falter said. “It involves different conversations about climate change and this is just the beginning.”
The exhibition opened on Saturday and will remain open until May 24.
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Map by Matt Bechtold. Graphics by Cat Coquillette.
— — Edited by Heather Melanson
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