Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service's Blog

A New Look at Old Fish

In a windowless room on the ground floor of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, museum specialist Sandra Raredon opens a specimen jar and removes a Notopogon schoteli with forceps. She blots the preservative from the fish, places it on a panel, retreats to the other side of the leaded-wall room, and gives it a shot of 68 kilovolts from the digital x-ray machine mounted above. Seconds later its ghostly image appears on her computer screen. She saves the file to her hard drive and returns the fish to the jar. Raredon then readies a Pegasus draconis for its close-up.

It’s a procedure she’ll repeat again and again to meet her museum’s goal of digitally documenting all 20,000 primary type specimens (preserved specimens that serve to represent particular species) in its Division of Fishes collection, the largest in the world. Despite the prosaic process, the results are anything but.

What has Raredon discovered? Here's a glimpse of a few fascinating details . . .

Read the full article about our latest science exhibition, Ichthyo: The Architecture of Fish, in this month's issue of our biannual newsletter, SITELINE. Want to subscribe?

Coming Soon! Earth from Space posters

You've probably been sucked into using Google Earth at least once, zooming in on your community or even your street. Well, Earth from Space is the ultimate eye candy for anyone interested in planetary voyeurism (putting static Google maps to shame I dare say). With views of powerful weather phenomenon, impressive city skylines, and diverse global ecosystems, Earth from Space allows us to ride along with high-tech space satellites like Landsat 7, QuickBird, and Terra, "seeing" exactly what they see. It's complicated science, but it's also fascinating and beautiful, probably the very reasons that thousands of visitors have flocked to the exhibition as it has traveled across the country.

If you can't make it to the large-scale exhibit, we've got good news for you. SITES and the U.S. Geological Survey are producing a free poster version of Earth from Space, featuring the same stunning images that have been so popular (the traveling exhibit won a government communications award for science content in 2007). A collaboration with geographer and curator Andrew Johnston at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s (NASM) Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, the posters will be available on a limited basis to libraries, schools, community centers, and others.

>>Interested in finding out how your institution can acquire a set?

>>See conceptual design for the poster exhibit

In Search of Giant Squid

Since its initial splash in 2004, In Search of Giant Squid has been one of our most popular exhibitions. Why shouldn't it be? It's a fascinating topic that gets to the very core of your inner explorer--a veritable needle-in-the-haystack search for a real-life sea monster.

Surrounded by the kind of lore usually reserved for the Lochness Monster, Big Foot, and the Tasmanian Tiger, the giant squid is one of the last great mysteries in the natural world. In fact, nobody had ever filmed a live giant squid in the wild until September 2004, when a crew off the coast of the Ogasawara Islands near Japan shot some unbelievable footage of a squid trying to escape a carefully baited jig.

Since then, we've asked exhibition visitors, "How would you catch a giant squid?" And we've received some fairly erudite ideas from kids across the country, especially in Seattle (exhibited at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture). Here are few clever theories:

• "I think you should grow a baby squid, and when I grow up I’ll raise baby squid too."
• "You need to catch a whole bunch of shrimp and put them in a giant net. Then put it in the ocean and put a water camera above the net."
• "Have you considered looking the giant squids with a REALLY big magnifying glass? I think it might help."
• "I think you should try cloning some squid so that you don’t have to try to find them out in the ocean."
• "We could create a sonar machine powerful enough to divide the ocean into segments. Then using a machine we could project sonar waves over the segments to find animals and objects within the sonar area."

Of course, there were many kids who thought that cookies and chocolate cake were the way to go--sure to work for the sugar-addicted giant squid. Others simply wrote adoring letters to the exhibition curator, Dr. Clyde Roper, who according to many is the closest thing out there to an oceanic Indiana Jones.

Keep those ideas coming! With your help, Dr. Roper might just find his own squid to travel with the exhibition.

What on Earth?

What's the name of the exhibition?
Caves: A Fragile Wilderness

What's the picture?
It's called "Neverland" and is a geologic feature from a New Mexico cave. Photo by Dave Burnell

>>See the whole picture

Traveling through the Solar System

As always, people here get excited when an exhibition, usually several years in the making, is nearing completion. I imagine that it's something akin to sending a child off to college. Even though they put you through the ringer on a daily basis, it's a bit hard to let them go when it's finally time.

But, alas, SITES project director Devra Wexler dropped off the last two prints for Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes at the framer's shop yesterday. We did a final pass over the .pdfs of the exhibition panels on Wednesday, looking one last time for grammatical inconsistencies and to ensure that the language was as strong and compelling as the images themselves. All the planets must have been properly aligned as almost everything was perfect.

Of course, it's easy when you're working with these kinds of images--so amazing that they make you wish you paid more attention in Astronomy 101. The man behind these interstellar visions is Michael Benson, an artist and filmmaker who spent years scouring NASA's archives for raw material with which to work. Benson essentially took stills that the space probes had shot on various missions (going back some 40 years) and collaged them together, creating seamless alien landscapes and panoramas. From the blazing inferno at the center of our solar system to the terrestrial and gaseous planets and their bizarre moons, Benson makes these far-away places appear tangible and real. It's art and science and a great deal of patience as some of the completed images took months for him to assemble. These are the kinds of images that inspire 5th graders to be astronauts and astronomers. And for the rest of us, Benson's planetary pictures make us realize that there is a beautiful sense of continuity in our wondrous solar system.

Beyond starts its national tour in March 2008 at the Monmouth Museum in Lincroft, NJ. It travels until 2011. Check the schedule to see if Beyond will make a stop in your hometown.

Lasting Light Kicks Off

Plans are really coming together for our new Grand Canyon exhibition, Lasting Light, which opens in February 2009. Recently I sat down with collaborator Richard Jackson of Hance Partners, the Flagstaff studio that printed the stunning photographs included in the exhibition.

Mr. Jackson shared with me the background story of the exhibition, and his enthusiasm for the subject was evident.

Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography grew out of a conversation Mr. Jackson had with staff at the Grand Canyon Association. As a fine-art printer, Mr. Jackson has extensive experience working with landscape photographers, and thought that in addition to the images themselves, a bigger story could be told: that of the photographers themselves.

"Pictures are only part of the story," Mr. Jackson says. "The stories of the photographers are also amazing. Think of the dedication they have, the effort to go day after day, year after year, sometimes to the same place time after time just to find the right weather, the right conditions to take the picture that truly expresses the place. They're carrying 80-pound backpacks into the canyon, and then there is the artistry and skill to be able to communicate their vision to those who don't make the trek."

SITES is pleased to be able to bring these stories and the resulting photographs to the public through this new traveling exhibition. Stay tuned for more updates on Lasting Light!

--Devra Wexler
Exhibition Project Director

Earth from Space Wins Communications Award

In the beginning, it was tough to bring the content in Earth from Space down to a level that most of us could understand. Let's face it, the hard science of what makes space satellites tick isn't exactly the kind of thing most people study on a daily basis. But what everyone can appreciate are the images that those machines zip back to Earth. I mean who wouldn't find a picture of New York City from 500 miles above the planet as least as cool (or more so) as an image of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie walking down the red carpet? How about the perfect geometry of the Great Pyramids as viewed from hundreds of miles above the Earth? In a word, "awesome."

You can imagine that we were elated when we heard that Earth from Space, an exhibition that almost didn't happen, received the 2007 Shoemaker Award for Communications Product Excellence. The award recognizes materials that effectively "communicate complex scientific concepts and discoveries into words and pictures that capture the interests and imaginations of the American public." The judges included writers, designers, and scientists from the both the public and private sectors. Dirk Kempthorne, the current Secretary of the Interior, presented the award to the project team, which included Devra Wexler, Jennifer Schommer, Andrew Johnston (NASM exhibition curator), Frederic Williams, Miriam Keegan, Ron Beck (USGS), and Marissa Hoechsetter.

The whole group had a fantastic time working on this exhibition. Most of all, we were thrilled with the help that NASA, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, and USGS provided to make it all come to life. Check it out in your corner of the world!

-Heather Foster Shelton, SITES writer/editor

Can you see the Space Station from where you are?

Just got back from a week in Maine, where the sky is so clear at night that we could see the International Space Station. We found this link, which allows viewers to select their closest city to get the time and coordinates of the ISS's orbit: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/sightings/index.html

Watching a bright light cross the night sky for 3 minutes is very cool. So is SITES' exhibition, Earth from Space, which gives glimpses of what those satellites see from above. And the exhibition's website provides resources for parents, teachers, and visitors. Check it out at: http://www.earthfromspace.si.edu

-Andrea Stevens, Director of Strategic Communications