The Slater Museum of Natural History finds its home in Thompson Hall, the science building. Typically, the museum displays several stuffed large birds of prey, and much more taxidermy that is available for young interested scientists to investigate.
However, the museum took a step back from methodical scientific exploration of the world this spring when the doors were opened to an art exhibit displaying pieces that combined the fields of the arts and natural science.
The pieces displayed in the exhibit ranged from the fully scientific and technical—an armadillo preserved perfectly in a jar stands out —to the fully artistic, such as handcrafted stonework replications of many different forms of beetles and paintings and sketch drawings of a swath of plants and animals.
Every piece is an attempt to combine these two spheres in an aesthetic and intellectual way. Most of the exhibits had a placard placed underneath, explaining the significance of the work and describing a scientific observation based on the piece or an observation about the subject.
“The harpy eagle is the largest eagle in South America and eats primarily monkeys and sloths” one such placard helpfully stated, resting underneath a pencil drawing of this creature in its natural habitat.
In the main room, a painting stood next to a specimen tray showing the evolutionary development of Darwin’s finches over many generations.
There were a number of pieces in the exhibit that attempted to completely marry the scientific and artistic aspects of nature. A portrait of a room scattered with scientific debris á la “I Spy” asked the viewer to physically engage with the subtleties of natural scientific exploration.
Several students acted as curators for the exhibit during its open house event on Wednesday, April 3. One curator stood behind a table covered in taxidermied animals of various sizes and colors.
Interested patrons investigated the many stuffed animals as the curator explained the power of color signaling in the animal kingdom regarding mating rituals, protection and camouflage. Each of these students was eager to help patrons discover and understand more esoteric pieces of art.
Nick Lyon, a first-year student and docent, sat in a room with coloring-book style pages that allowed patrons to create your own species of animal.
When he saw student Grant Hoos staring intently at an image of a sloth, he helpfully told him: “Did you know that an adult sloth could at any point mistake his own arm for a branch, reach out to bite it and cause himself to plummet to his death below?”
The exhibit demonstrates the value of the liberal arts education available at the University of Puget Sound. It offers a marriage of scientific and artistic intellectualism and examines what it is possible to discover using both, and the inherent artistry in nature that can be discovered through scientific exploration.