Museum special exhibit highlights research and collections

Submitted by Kerynn Fisher
Phone: (907) 474-6941
02/12/07

FAIRBANKS, AK - After more than a year of activity centered on the architecture and new art galleries in its recent expansion, the University of Alaska Museum of the North focuses its latest special exhibit on its research collections. "The Nature and Art of Collections" features Yup’ik coiled grass baskets, a drawer of butterflies, 13,000-year-old stone tools, the DNA sequence for a collared pika and other objects from the collections. The exhibit runs through runs through Sunday, April 29, 2007.

"Much of the museum’s work happens in the field and behind the scenes in our collections and research labs," said museum director Aldona Jonaitis. "This exhibit gives us a chance to share more of that work with our visitors."

Objects from each research collection illustrate the breadth and depth of the museum’s holdings, which now number 1.4 million artifacts and specimens. Personal statements from the curators and excerpts from field notebooks give visitors a brief introduction to the museum’s researchers and their work. Visitors can see a selection of tools used in the field by the museum’s curators, students and volunteers, including a vasculum used by botanists the early 20th century and a shotgun, a Sherman trap, a butterfly net and trays of cryovials used by researchers today.

Throughout the exhibit, labels prompt both children and adults to look for the detail in the collections - to count the tree rings on a fossilized tree trunk, examine the whiskers on a pencil-tailed tree mouse, find the two non-insects in a drawer of tropical insects or look for the footprints of a theropod dinosaur in a plaster cast, for example. Magnifying lenses give visitors a chance to examine some of the specimens up close.

Museum members are invited to meet the curators at an opening reception for the exhibit from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 15. Light hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served; minors must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Individuals can join at the door or online at http://www.uaf.edu/museum/membership if they aren’t already members.

Admission to "The Nature and Art of Collections" is included in the museum’s general admission price: $10 for adults, $9 for seniors, $5 for youth 7-17 and free for children 6 and under. Museum members and UAF students (with valid ID) also receive free admission. The museum’s winter/spring hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and noon to 5 p.m. weekends. Information on the museum’s programs and exhibits is available at 907-474-7505 and online at http://www.uaf.edu/museum.

CONTACT:

Kerynn Fisher, communications coordinator, University of Alaska Museum of the North, at (907) 474-6941 or k.fisher@uaf.edu.