Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature and Culture (original) (raw)
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Archives of Natural History, 2011
As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, the first contemporary artwork to win a permanent place in the Museum. While the artist claimed that the inspiration for TREE came from Darwin's famous notebook sketch of branching evolution, sometimes referred to as his “tree of life” drawing, this article emphasises the apparent incongruity between Darwin's sketch and the artist's design – best explained by other, complementary sources of inspiration. In the context of the Museum's active participation in struggles over science and religion, the effect of the new artwork is contradictory. TREE celebrates Darwinian evolutionism, but it resonates with deep-rooted, mythological traditions of tree symbolism to do so. This complicates the status of the Museum space as one of disinterested, secular science, but it also contributes, with or without the intentions of the Museum's management, to consolidate two sometimes conflicting strains within the Museum's history. TREE celebrates human effort, secular science and reason – but it also evokes long-standing mythological traditions to inspire reverence and remind us of our humble place in this world.
Arboreal Architecture: A Visual History of Trees
“Trees,” in the words of the American photographer Robert Adams, “smell good, feel good, sound good, and look good. And if that weren’t enough, they point beyond themselves.” Trees, in other words, are good for thinking about other things. Supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for Curatorial Research, this catalogue explores three ways that trees can help us to think by situating art in a suite of conceptual frameworks: tree diagrams, figurative trees, and tree maps. It grows from an exhibition of the same title at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center (April 15 - July 20, 2015). Embracing the curatorial framework of exhibition as form, Arboreal Architecture uses graphic wall installations to create these different conceptual structures in the gallery space. Arboreal Architecture addresses many noteworthy representations of trees in the Cantor’s collection, including a sixth-century Egyptian medallion, Neo-impressionist painting from France, California photography by Ansel Adams, and a colored drawing of a tree by Leland Stanford Jr.
Gender: Nature , 2016
Museums are powerful institutions that are often taken for granted and unchallenged by their publics. Art museums in particular position themselves as the protectors of a collective aesthetic past and as curators of the contemporary moment. Although many assume that museums reflect the values, identities, and lived experiences of the larger society in which they are embedded, museums catalogue and display a collection of artworks and artifacts that represent the ideals of a privileged cadre of gatekeepers who have cultural and economic power. Social inequality and hierarchies organized by gender, sexuality, race, and social class are evident in the context of museum collections both past and present and were often buttressed as natural. Essentialist and social evolutionist thinking, such as the belief that women are inherently unsuited to be great artists or that nonwhite and non-Western people do not produce legitimate or fine works of art, demonstrates how the social construction of nature relates to the discrimination and exclusion of groups of people. However, within the past few decades, the institutionalized practices and cultural role of museums have been challenged by both scholars and artists who have shown that they are as flawed as the society they represent. Feminist critique offers a lens to reexamine how to define art, confront takenfor- granted assumptions regarding the inherent cultural value of objects and their natural value, and revisit the role of museums in the context of cultural inclusivity and diversity.
Depicting the tree of life in museums: Guiding principles from psychological research
Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2014
The Tree of Life is revolutionizing our understanding of life on Earth, and, accordingly, evolutionary trees are increasingly important parts of exhibits on biodiversity and evolution. The authors argue that in using these trees to effectively communicate evolutionary principles, museums need to take into account research results from cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology while maintaining a focus on visitor engagement and enjoyment. Six guiding principles for depicting evolutionary trees in museum exhibits distilled from this research literature were used to evaluate five current or recent museum trees. One of the trees was then redesigned in light of the research while preserving the exhibit’s original learning goals. By attending both to traditional factors that influence museum exhibit design and to psychological research on how people understand diagrams in general and Tree of Life graphics in particular, museums can play a key role in fostering 21st century scientific literacy.
"Art and Science, Nature and Art in a Natural History Museum"
The museum is no longer just a space for reflection and wonder. It is beginning to take on the appearance of a laboratory. As such, it goes beyond a strictly educational scope and embraces other forms of participation by specialists as well as by artists and the public, all of whom find in it a place in which to share experience and knowledge. All this enhances the museum experience and takes to a whole new level. By fomenting creativity, the museum also becomes a creator of new forms of interaction and experimentation, while opening up multiple viewpoints. The end of an era is beginning -- an era based on a nineteenth century matrix that envisioned the museum as a set of disconnected boxes. Many people are hoping this is so.
The university museum: respecting old values, embracing new directions
Preserving collections for future generations does not exclude finding new and modern uses for collections, thus combining 'old' materials with new ideas and modern technologies. In this article, I demonstrate how we use our collection specimens for knowledge communication while not only conveying scientific information, but also the historic and cultural significance of specimens; how they are used not only for classes and exhibitions, but for workshops where students determine group characters and find evolutionary processes, and for bachelor dissertations in science communication. We are developing workshops to be accessed by students through the internet while studying the actual specimens. We organize workshops on the use of the senses and the strength of the scientific method. Behind the scenes, we are conversing with others to form one university museum with a collective mission statement and an original niche within the museum community that corresponds with expectat...
Civilising nature: museums and the environment
2007
Interpreting the natural environment in the cultural context of a museum is common practice in the early 21st century. It was also quite common in the 19th century. This chapter considers some of the key discourses in natural history and science museums to reveal a rich legacy of ...