Henry Pollack Ph. D., U of M Professor and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize will discuss his most current research on climate change and his book, A World Without Ice, at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 12 at Cranbrook Institute of Science. Pollack has been a professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan for more than forty years, travels regularly to Antarctica and was recently at the Copenhagen Energy Summit. He offers a compelling look at the delicate balance between ice and climate, and what the consequences of its disappearance could be. A book signing will follow.

Pollack’s Artology sponsored lecture is free with admission but seating in the auditorium at the Institute of Science is limited to 195 and will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

Artology: the fusion of Art and Science at Cranbrook, is a collaborative between Cranbrook Institute of Science and Cranbrook Art Museum.  The lecture also complements Cranbrook’s current exhibitions  “Cape Farewell: Art & Climate Change” and “The Changing Earth.” The Cape Farewell project is widely acknowledged to be the most significant sustained artistic response to climate change anywhere in the world and features video, photographic, sculptural and mixed media installations. The Changing Earth immerses the visitor in climate changes across time through fossils and a living coral reef. 

Cranbrook Institute of Science commemorates Charles Darwin’s 201st birthday as part of its Second Saturday Series of free science activities on February 13 from 1-4 p.m. 

Hands-on study and games will include the chance to examine skull castings of some of the most important specimens in the story of human evolution and see and handle the museum’s recently acquired 3.6 billion year old fossils –the earth’s oldest known.  In addition “Freaky Beaks,” offers a game of matching bird beaks with their probable food type based on structure and function.

Institute Geologist John Zawiskie will address Darwin’s concern about the apparent lack of fossils in the Earth’s old Precambrian rock layers at a 2:30 lecture. Darwin considered this inexplicable and a valid argument against his theory of evolution.  Zawiskie will review the evolutionary research of the last 50 years and what scientists have learned about the Precambrian fossil record to reveal the solution to Darwin’s dilemma. 

Second Saturday Science activities are free with admission to the Institute of Science. 

Please note. On Friday, February 19, the Institute of Science will be closed to the public for a private function until 5 p.m. in the evening after which it will be open until 10 p.m.

Cranbrook Institute of Science is located at 39221 Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook Institute of Science is open daily 10am-5pm with extended hours on Friday until 10pm. Museum admission is $9.50 adults, $7.50 children 2-12 and senior citizens (65+); children under 2 and members admitted free. Friday evening admission 5-10pm, $5.50 Adults, $4.50 children ages 2-12 and seniors 65+, children under 2 and Members are free.  Planetarium and bat program tickets are $4 general admission; $3 for CIS and OBC members; $1 for children under 2.  Non-members must also pay museum admission. For more information about becoming a member of Cranbrook Institute of Science call 248 645.3200 or visit http://science.cranbrook.edu.

The exhibition “Cape Farewell: Art & Climate Change” was created in partnership with the Natural History Museum, London. The exhibition is now embarking on a world tour with Barbican Touring Arts. The presentation at Cranbrook is its North American première.

Four Taxidermied Heads

T’is the season to forge new territories, expand your horizons, leave the everyday behind and I know just the place to do it: The Cranbrook Institute of Science (http://science.cranbrook.edu). You can become reacquainted with a favorite place while attending an exciting new exhibit! It’s all part of Artology, a year-long program of exhibits and events while the Cranbrook Art Museum is closed for reconstruction.

The exhibit’s title alone, ”Animal Logic” promises some thought-provoking elements alive with visual ironies. Photographs, installations and explorations by New York-based photographer Richard Barnes will not let you down. Be prepared to leave this expedition with a new perspective on wild life, museum life and maybe even your own life.
While photographing archaeological excavations for Yale and University of Pennsylvania in Egypt, Barnes became interested in the idea of how museum collections develop, and their expression of the way the natural world and the human world collide. Specifically, he was drawn to the process of taking the object from its original habitat to it being presented to and interpreted for the public in the museum setting. Barnes eventually found himself “obsessed” with the objects destined to be hidden from view in storage containers, wrapped up and forgotten in some warehoused archive.
Confronted with Barnes’ acutely focused, dramatically lit photographs of atrophied animals–some frozen in a gesture of climbing, flying or moving through space–can in itself take your breath away. Upon closer examination, you begin to notice the artifice of museum paraphernalia. Seeing employees involved in the construction of simulated replicas of their once natural environment adds an additional eerie element to the already mysterious journey these beings must have embarked upon.

Two Chimps

“In doing Animal Logic,” Barnes writes, “I chose to work with collections in natural history museums often undergoing renovation. Granted access to the dismantling process, I was able to cross the proscenium of the stage and go behind the curtain… In these scenarios the conservators, construction workers and scene painters…become replacement actors on the stage. These understudies remind us of our fragile interdependence, just as the animals do in their fictive states of suspended animation.”

Barnes takes this idea further by going beyond drawing our attention to the behind-the-scenes underpinnings of how museums store and display objects. He also shows us museums shedding pieces of their past, and how, for example, the changing political climate makes an impact on the ‘diorama’ as a vehicle for display, as many museums began to phase them out entirely.

The work is organized as a series of photographs and installations of the animal objects themselves. Some are suspended precariously from the ceiling hung with clear fishing line. Dismantled heads of various species are strewn together in a huge acrylic box actually used to store the animal specimens. A video installation titled Murmur brings us into a space in which we are surrounded by three softly lit diffused screens with moving projections taken from still photographs of flocks of starlings migrating in the Roman sky. Murmur is the actual term given to these groups of starlings. Added to the motion of the stills are the actual sounds the birds make while migrating. The series came about when Barnes won the Rome prize in 2005. While there he became infatuated with the subtle graphic-like patterns the starlings created in the sky. The experience involves all the senses, as you feel transported to a distant place.

Problem Shelves

I don’t want to give away all the surprises but photographs of a series of bird nests made from human debris elegantly lit against dark colored Victorian wallpapers are themselves worth the trip. The barely visible wallpaper backgrounds feature bird iconography, the result being these images are deceptively artistic. The nests incorporate brightly saturated colors with natural textures and tones creating beautifully crafted delicate sculptures.

The nests occupy an entirely different context than originally intended, which is the aspects of displacement and disorientation that Barnes brings to the forefront in much of his work. Susan Yelavich points this out in her essay from the book “Animal Logic:”

“The uncanny is the paradoxical sensation of feeling homesick while knowing that a home doesn’t exist anymore. Barnes is alert to the psychic discomfort of ‘placelessness’–a sensation exacerbated by forces of globalization. Today, any residual sense of permanence has been thoroughly undermined.”

Copies of the artist’s book, Animal Logic, are available in the museum bookstore.

This exhibit is part of the University of Michigan’s Theme “Meaningful Objects: Museums in the Academy” and coincides with exhibits at the University of Michigan, University of Michigan Museum of Art, and Museum of Natural History at the University of Michigan.

Other delights to take in at the Science Institute are the natural mineral exhibit, and The Story of Us, an exhibit that references 300 cultural objects with the latest technology including a Hologram guide that has to be seen to believe.

Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes
Sunday, October 4, 2009 – Sunday, January 3, 2010
Temporary Exhibition Hall at Cranbrook Institute of Science

Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes
Through January 3, 2010

Cranbrook Art Museum and Cranbrook Institute of Science mark the start of a pioneering collaboration entitled Artology: the Fusion of Art and Science Art at Cranbrook with the opening of Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes at the Institute of Science through January 3, 2010

A Scene from Winged Migration

The Artology collaborative focuses on creating visual and experiential examples of the ways in which art and science frequently parallel or complement each other. Artology exhibits and related lectures, films and field trips will simultaneously immerse museum visitors in the arts and the sciences. While Cranbrook Art Museum is closed to the public for construction, art exhibitions at the Institute will be paired with related topical scientific artifacts, objects and specimens from the Institute’s collection to illustrate the Artology concept. A Cranbrook-designed Artology logo visually designates related events and activities.

Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes, the first Artology exhibition, presents a survey of the work of acclaimed New York and San Francisco-based photographer Richard Barnes. This exhibition showcases work from Barnes’ most recent major photographic series, most notably Animal Logic, Barnes’ engaging and, at times, surreal images of dioramas and artifacts from natural history museums.

At the center of the exhibition will be the acclaimed project Folded Murmur, in which Barnes collaborated with video artist Alex Schweder and composer Charles Norman Mason to create an integrated photographic, projected-video, and composed sound installation based on their study of starling migration in Rome. The Folded Murmer project allows visitors to enter a space that surrounds them with the sounds and experiences of a starling migration.

As a Cranbrook-exclusive component of the exhibition, Barnes incorporates new photographs taken during his exploration of the Institute’s collection of over 150,000 objects distributed across nine fields of study. Objects from the Institute’s anthropology, ornithology and paleontology collections will be integrated into the Animal Logic experience. Bones and other life science objects will reflect the subjects of many of the photographs. Taxidermy specimens echo diorama subjects featured in Barnes’ work and also explain and illustrate the process taxidermists use to create these interpretations of the natural world.

Birds’ nests and taxidermy specimens from the Institute’s extensive collection add depth to the Folded Murmer installation and offer texture to Refuge, a series of photographs of birds’ nests which incorporate the cast offs of humans.

As a reflection upon Barnes’ work, the Institute of Science also re-install four of its historic dioramas, removed during construction in the late 1990’s, for the duration of Animal Logic.

The Artology experience includes Art “interventions” in the Institute’s Mineral Gallery, a free film series, three special lectures and a Members’ only field trip.

Art “interventions” in the Institute’s Mineral Gallery highlight objects from the Art Museum’s collection which reflect materials found in the mineral collections. A silver tea caddy and candy box, porcelain and ceramic vessels, and gold and silver jewelry are displayed among the materials from which they were formed to highlight the association of science and art.
Drawing on themes found in Animal Logic, the Artology film series melds the art of film with scientific topics for an evening of entertainment. Films include:

The Jungle Book Nov. 27

This Disney classic, based on the series of stories by Rudyard Kipling, tells the story of a young boy, Mowgli, raised in the jungle by wolves. Featuring catchy songs and astonishing animation, The Jungle Book is fun for the whole family (1967, 78 minutes).

Winged Migration Dec. 4

This Academy Award nominated film showcases footage of the incredible natural patterns produced by bird migration. Covering 40 countries and all 7 continents, Winged Migration is a visual delight (2001, 98 minutes).

All films are free with admission or membership and air in the auditorium at Cranbrook Institute of Science at 7 p.m.

Unless noted otherwise, lectures are free with admission and take place in the auditorium at Cranbrook Institute of Science.

Finally, exclusively for Cranbrook Art Museum and Cranbrook Institute of Science Members, the Cranbrook ARTravel program visits the art and science museums in Ann Arbor on Saturday, Nov. 14. Gregory Wittkopp, Director, Cranbrook Art Museum and Mike Stafford, Director, Cranbrook Institute of Science will act as guides for the day.

Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes runs through January 3, 2010 and is free with admission or Membership at either Cranbrook Institute of Science or Cranbrook Art Museum.

Artology continues with a second exhibition, Cape Farewell, Jan. 31-June 4, 2010. Cape Farewell pioneers the cultural response to climate change. The aim of the project is to produce art founded in scientific research, communicating on an emotional and human scale the urgency of the global climate challenge. The exhibition is comprised of a range of media including photographic work, video, installations, and prints from a selection of leading contemporary artists.

Artology exhibits, lectures and related events are sponsored by the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, The Erb Family Foundation and the MASCO Corporation Foundation.

“Animal Logic: Photography and Installation by Richard Barnes” was organized collaboratively by Cranbrook Art Museum and Cranbrook Institute of Science under the direction of Art Museum Director Gregory Wittkopp and Institute of Science Director Mike Stafford.

The photographs of Richard Barnes are from the collection of artist, courtesy of the Howard House Gallery, Seattle, Washington.

Folded Murmur is a video installation by Alex Schweder and a part of “Murmur,” a collaborative project by Richard Barnes, Alex Schweder and Charles Norman Mason that includes photographs, projected video and composed sound. Folded Murmur is from the collection of Alex Schweder, courtesy of the artist.

Cranbrook Institute of Science is located at 39221 Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook Institute of Science is open daily 10am-5pm with extended hours on Friday until 10pm. Museum admission is $9.50 adults, $7.50 children 2-12 and senior citizens (65+); children under 2 and members admitted free. Friday evening admission 5-10pm, $5.50 Adults, $4.50 children ages 2-12 and seniors 65+, children under 2 and Members are free. Planetarium and bat program tickets are $4 general admission; $3 for CIS and OBC members; $1 for children under 2. Non-members must also pay museum admission. For more information about becoming a member of Cranbrook Institute of Science call 248 645.3200 or visit http://science.cranbrook.edu.