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Science on Tap: Animals Unleashed

Joe Vanderhoff | June 6, 2018

Topics: beer, Big event, cocktails, Fun, science, Science Museum

Science on Tap: Animals Unleashed

Animal science has been unleashed in the Museum! Join us for an adults-only night at the Museum full of kooky animal facts, childish fun and choice cocktails.

In honor of our summer touring exhibition, BODY WORLDS: ANIMAL INSIDE OUT, we’re planning a night full of wild animal science. Learn about R-rated animal mating behavior in a discussion lead by Catherine Lowry Franssen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Longwood University. When you’re done blushing, head over to meet the creatures in our Animal Lab, watch a sheep heart dissection, learn about climate impacts on the animal kingdom, create your own animal mask and take a new Instagram profile photo in front of our green screen, try your hand at making a dog leash, or check out a live astronomy show in the Dome.

Dog Wagon and Hungry Turtle will be here for sustenance. We’ll have three floors of beverages for your drinking pleasure: Väsen will be on track level offering two beers, Belle Isle Moonshine will be camped on the third level with two signature cocktails, and friendly Museum staff will be on the main level serving a variety of beer and wine options.

Just when you thought we were done, we’ll have a special showing of Snakes on a Plane at 9 pm in the Dome. Samuel L. Jackson on a 76-foot screen. Yes please.

*Guests must be 21 or older to attend, no exceptions.

Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8.50 for members. Food and drink available for purchase. Click here to get your tickets today!

Add Snakes on a Plane to your night for $5. Add BODY WORLDS: ANIMAL INSIDE OUT to your night for $7.50 for the general public and $5 for members. These tickets must be purchased in person. 

When: Thursday, June 14 from 6 to 10 pm

Event Page

 

 

 

 

Science Inspires Latest Photography Exhibit at Candela Books + Gallery

Ash Griffith | January 23, 2018

Topics: Candela Books + Gallery, richmond art, RVA ARt, RVA photography, science

Science and art are such an uncommon intersection, which arguably makes for a curious theme. Candela Books + Gallery delves into this idea with eight artists in their latest exhibit, “Science As Muse.”

The exhibit, which features photographic works from Walter Chappell, Caleb Charland, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Pam Fox, Daniel Kariko, Michael Rauner, Robert Shults, and Susan Worsham, shares with viewers how each of these artists, in one way or another, interpret science and use it as an inspiration for their work.

Image may contain: indoor
Caleb Charland, “Fruit Battery Still Life (Citrus),” Archival Pigment Print, 32 x 40 inches Courtesy of Sasha Wolf Projects

“We conjured up the idea, I think probably with a couple of familiar names, sort of artists that we work with on an ongoing basis,” said Candela founder and director Gordon Stettinius. “We had people for whom science was pretty specifically a muse, and we thought about that as just sort of a broader topic. I think the early photographers really were sort of scientists or chemists engaged in pursuing some sort of alchemical dreams.”

Associate Director Ashby Nickerson said photography and science have always had this really close relationship and for this particular exhibit, the gallery received a wide variety of work. 

“We got some vintage work, darkroom work, and then we also have digital alongside that, too,” she said.

Velvet Ant_Print copy
Daniel Kariko “Chair, Main Office, September 3rd [Velvet Ant], 2017 Archival Inkjet Print, 27 x 28 inches
The show itself houses roughly 45 pieces from the eight artists. As you walk through the show, it’s not difficult to notice a very particular flow, each piece telling its own story.

“There {are} a few people that we sort of hung their work all in one area, and then we did break up a few in both galleries,” said Nickerson. “Sometimes, that’s just because it’s a nice balance, or it helps support the other work. There’s some really cool relationships between a few of the artists. Pam Fox and Susan Worsham have a really nice relationship in my mind.”

Despite the fact that they worked separately, when placed together the artists seem to have a natural motif together in their work.  “With the group show, you start to see almost a composition. You want to see the formal elements, the circular kind of motif that’s going on. From Susan into Pam into Susan, or the rhythm when you have color and black and white work, you kind of want it to feel kind of balanced,” Stettinius added.

rauner_shulginlab (1)
Michael Rauner “Sulgin’s Lab”

Susan Worsham, a Richmond native, discovered photography while she was in college and found her muse through her neighbor Margaret, a biology professor.

“Through Margaret, things like the picture with the bread, ‘Communion’, by taking that home and letting it rot, and seeing how it changed, through that process, and the process of making art, and the process of visiting her, it slowly, like the circle of life, it’s become more about life,” Worsham said. “I bring [the bread] to Margaret and she shows me the penicillin which is a healing fungi, and I start to see.”

CatEsophagus
Susan Worsham “Margaret’s Azalea’s Through Section of Cat’s Esophagus,” 2014

Worsham said she normally doesn’t delve into science too much in her work, but a fond memory from the third grade, which has stuck with her to this day, also inspired some of her pieces for the exhibit.

“My dad was a chemistry teacher and he came to our class {for} show and tell, and he dipped flowers into liquid nitrogen and then he broke them on our desks, and I was so amazed,” she said. “The flowers shattering, I still think about that today. Because the beautiful gardens, bittersweet things that are beautiful, but then shatter…I make all of these connections in my work, and Margaret has helped to make the work richer and broader.”

TrumpetFlower
Susan Worsham “Section of Trumpet Flower,” 2017

Worsham’s view of the world through her work shows her dedication to the beautiful, small moments in life, and in turn, aims to find a comfortable balance between not only her view of the world, but of Margaret’s as well.

“Her [Margaret] way of seeing the world is through a glass slide, and mine is through my viewfinder,” she said. “That’s her way of seeing life, as a biologist, a little different, and mine is seeing that beauty,” she added.

Pam Fox, also a Richmond-based photographer, already had some pieces that perfectly fit into the concept the gallery had for the exhibit when they approached about showcasing her work.

Pam Fox, “Windsock,” 1999-2002. Gelatin Silver Print, 20 x 16 inches

“I made this body of work a number of years ago, and Gordon remembered it,” Fox said. “I work at a college, Hampden-Sydney that is really, really old, and I found, with some help of my colleagues there, this stash of this old science equipment that had been in the attic for 50-70 [how many] years, and I just fell in love with how it looked.”

Fox, who received her MFA in photography at Hampden-Sydney, is currently a professor at the Prince Edward County-based liberal arts school and like Worsham, found her scientist muse for her collection within the story of a photographer.  

“I’ve thought a lot about Gordon’s idea of science as muse, and I was thinking, ‘well, gosh John Draper’s kind of my muse because his presence is still there,” she said.

Draper, a professor at Hampden-Sydney in 1836, was also a historian, photographer, and scientist who is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face.

Screen Shot 2018-01-04 at 11.38.23 AM
Pam Fox “Spark,” 1999-2002 Gelatin Silver Print, 20 x 16 inches

“His old camera is there, some of the equipment he might have used is there. And the fact that he was a scientist and a photographer,” Fox said. “Here’s this guy who’s inventing how to make a portrait. Like, he took a lens from an old telescope and fitted it onto a box and really, some people believe it’s the first camera in the United States ever made.”

rose
Pam Fox “Rose,” 2001

With so much potential through the Science as Muse premise, Stettinius said there is a possibility of a second exhibit and more.

“We have found a ton more interesting people. It’s just a really kind of ripe vein that we will need to explore again. So, we thought about maybe we could do this in a sort of follow up or a really awesome book potentially or something,” Stettinius said.

“Science as Muse” is on display at Candela Books + Gallery, located at 214 W. Broad St. through Feb. 17.  

Photos courtesy of Candela Books + Gallery. Top Photo:  Daniel Kariko, “Along City Greenway Path, May 2nd [Soldier Fly],” 2016. Archival Pigment Print, 27 x 28 inches

 

Art Sponsored by Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art 

Anthropology, Politics, and The Science of Understanding One Another

Christopher McDaniel | November 17, 2017

Topics: anatomy, Anthropology, genetics, group dynamics, Human Development, politics, science, vcu

Located in the back storage room of her basement lab, Dr. Amy Rector has a cabinet of anatomical wonders, including a significant collection of human skulls, which she uses to teach anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University. The skulls have been donated and handed down to VCU; fragile and delicate, they come complete with missing teeth and pencil marks from continued use. In one of the more macabre pieces of anatomy, she has a human brain that’s missing a diagonal section, indicating suicide from a gunshot wound. She even has a portion of someone’s jaw that has two decayed sections from abscessed infections.

Science.

Rector is an assistant professor with Virginia Commonwealth University’s anthropology faculty and one of the region’s brightest minds in human development. From her scientific viewpoint, anthropology exists on the fault line between the constraints of biology and culture, making her uniquely placed to walk us through today’s challenges.

Dr. Amy Rector

Which is important because contemporary America is defined by populations existing in perpetual divisiveness, aligning, identifying, and ostracizing themselves from the “other.” While this might be a historical phenomenon in the US, it is hardly unique in the scope of human development. The need for us, as humans, to group together is basic, and quite essential for the survival of our species. This gets deeply complex when one population imposes control over resources needed by different coexisting populations. Basically, it’s “us versus them” — an accurate anthropological description of the United States’ political climate as 2017 gives way to 2018.

To shed some light on what has brought us to this point, RVA Mag caught up with Dr. Rector to chat about the science of human development and group politics. Anthropology attempts to provide reasons for our current divisive state, using examples throughout our species’ history.

Hand Axe from 1.5 Million Years Ago

Rector’s expertise stems from her work in eastern and southern Africa, where she reconstructs paleoecological frameworks to decipher early human evolution. In layperson terms, paleoecology is the historical study of relationships between organisms, their interactions, and their environments.

She also focuses on fossil mammal communities by analyzing and identifying their ecological and bio-geographic relationships throughout their existence. Which is to say, she loves bones and loves mapping bone data to reconstruct not only fossil records of natural evolution, but how these organisms coexisted with their environment – giving us the broadest understanding of how we continue to relate with one another, even today. 

Deconstructed Skull

This semester, Rector has been teaching two of her favorite classes: bio-anthropology and human evolution. Bio-anthropology classes, which take her students more deeply into the subject, focus on topics unique to the discipline, explaining this as, “human variation and human adaptation, what differences mean — and what they don’t mean.” She added that this semester specifically, the class has a social justice angle to it in order to contextualize and dispel certain notions, such as the lack of genetic variation between the races.

“For example, this week we talked about health, disease, and how differing socio-economic statuses can affect a population’s overall health,” said Rector. “We talk about real-world modern problems that populations are up against, and how anthropology can solve, or help solve those problems.” She explained that culture widens these gaps between populations, not genetics and that different variations and cultures should be celebrating their commonalities, instead of further demonizing one another.

More often than not, the disagreement between populations in America originates out of prejudice and bias against those in the minority. However, the history of anthropology has not always been above the biases that have gripped Western societies for centuries. In Rector’s human evolution class, where she goes through the fossil record, she covers the ways early anthropological methods were inherently racist. She matter-of-factly discusses the methodology of our evolutionary lineage by highlighting the biased ways fossils have been studied. “We’re all from the same place, right? Scientists haven’t always interpreted it like that,” said Rector. “I make sure that when I teach, I contextualize that racial bias has been a part of anthropology from the beginning.” 

Human Heart

An example of a racially-biased and outdated form of physical anthropology is the study of phrenology, a pseudoscience that measured various parts of an individual’s skull and extrapolated impossible details about that individual from the results. It was used in the early 20th century as a paleo-anthropological tool to compare skull shapes of prehistoric men to alleged criminals.

While our physical differences can’t actually be used to determine criminal potential, there are still many things we can learn from the anthropological study of our differences. At one point, Rector spoke of South Africa’s pride over their place in the still-developing fossil record; they claim they are the birthplace of humans, “The Rainbow Nation.”

Human Skulls

Rector noted the significance of South Africa as humanity’s birthplace. “We all come from these lineages, spanning 7 million years,” said Rector. “And what’s so interesting about us is how we as populations diverged, where the variance emerged. That’s why we’ve survived. We can do the extraordinary, because our populations are variable.”

Variance refers to the differences that can emerge in two human populations located even a mere 50 miles apart. The demographic variables within this spectrum include life expectancy, fertility, and migration patterns — all things that help us better understand our core commonalities.

“Genetically, all humans are really similar with very little variation. You cannot identify someone’s race based on their genes, that’s not how it works,” she explained. “The social reality of race is very real, however, because of culture and traditions. That’s where anthropology sits; on the line between biology and culture.”

The fault line between culture and biology is something widely researched. Recently published by the National Institute of Health in an article titled “The biology of cultural conflict,” authors Gregory Burns and Scott Atran state that, “cultural conflict should manifest in two ways. First, if there are systemic and substantial cultural differences between groups of people, this would result in different types of processing in individual brains that form the group.” They explained further, “Take, for example, religion. When presented with a concept like God, a Christian and an atheist would surely react differently, and this will probably manifest as differences in brain activation.”

Therefore, from a scientific standpoint, the real question in our hyper-divisive age becomes: “Why don’t we value our commonalities, instead of exploiting our differences?” Rector used the basic analogy of the hunter-gatherer group to explain group dynamics and their subsequent politics and dynamics, and how the “us versus them” dichotomy originated from the first self-identified populations of humans – our ancestors. In her bioanthropology class, they “talk about the biology, or lack thereof, of racial categories,” said Rector, bringing it back, once again, to culture and tradition.

Brain Specimen

The anatomical wonders in Rector’s lab and the skulls from humans and our hominin ancestors provide a snapshot of human development spanning millions of years. While we may think the divisive nature of today’s society is something new, birthed from current ideologies, the truth is it’s nothing new. Group dynamics have been around as long as we have, but according to Rector, they’re what make us special, not a flaw. “I keep coming back to that over and over again in anthropology,” she said. “We need to value our differences. That’s what makes us strong.”

 

*Photos by Landon Shroder. All Specimens from Dr. Amy Rector’s Lab

Celebrate International Coffee Day with the help of the Science Museum of VA (Video)

Brad Kutner | September 29, 2014

Topics: international Coffee Day, science, Science Museum Of Virginia, videos

Today is International Coffee Day, where we honor the cup-a-joe which helps us get moving in the AM and keeps us up late studying.
[Read more…] about Celebrate International Coffee Day with the help of the Science Museum of VA (Video)

The Secret Life Of Bees: Richmond Beekeepers Association Put The Hive On Display At Science Museum Of Virginia

Marilyn Drew Necci | June 5, 2014

Topics: bees, Richmond Beekeepers Association, RVA, science, Science Museum Of Virginia

“See the one with the pollen right there on her legs? She’s shaking and then she’s going to go in a half circle to show how far away it is.” Valerie West, Vice President of Richmond Beekeepers Association, uses a magnifying glass to point out a honey bee performing a waggle dance. The dance is a form of communication between bees in the hive that signifies where to find nectar.
[Read more…] about The Secret Life Of Bees: Richmond Beekeepers Association Put The Hive On Display At Science Museum Of Virginia

Why Did Korean Scientists Build A Fully Functional Robot Velociraptor?

Marilyn Drew Necci | June 2, 2014

Topics: dinosaurs, Korea, pointless technological advancements, robotics, science, velociraptor, WTF

You can tell the scientists at South Korea’s Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology really love their job, regardless of how valuable its real-world applications might be–because even though I can’t imagine why we’d need a robotic replica of a velociraptor in the world, they have built one [link is in Korean].
[Read more…] about Why Did Korean Scientists Build A Fully Functional Robot Velociraptor?

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