PUTTING UP AN EXHIBIT - All hands are on deck in the final days before our special exhibit opens. Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Denali through the climbers’ journal entries. It opens on Saturday, May 18.
TEAM EFFORTS - Most people have no idea how museums put exhibits together. At UAMN, we’ve developed a process that, while slightly different with each exhibit, follows a basic structure of using a guest curator (myself, in the case of Denali Legacy) along with a curation team.
The curator develops the initial idea and shapes the narrative, while the team provides expertise in their various areas, including digital media (Roger Topp), communications, editing, and interviewing (Theresa Bakker), graphic and exhibit design (Tamara Martz), and exhibit production & fabrication (Steve Bouta). The hands-on and interactive elements are developed and refined by our Education Department staff (Jen Arseneau and Maite Agopian).
The team efforts put forward on Denali Legacy echoes that of the 1913 Stuck-Karstens expedition. No one person should receive the credit for accomplishing that dramatic task,
(via Team Efforts | Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain)
DENALI LEGACY: 100 YEARS on the MOUNTAIN
An exhibit opening May 18 at the University of Alaska Museum of the North tells the story of the first ascent of North America’s tallest mountain. “Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain” explores the journey through the journals of the four climbers who reached the peak on June 7, 1913.
Guest Curator Angela Linn says there was more to the story of the climb than the official published version. “As with all historical events, we learn about the history through the eyes of the person who wrote it down. The story that Hudson Stuck published in ‘Ascent of Denali’ was an exciting and important one – but the personalities of the team members didn’t come across.
The Stikine River in Southeast Alaska is home to all six of the known native species of amphibians, making it a herpetological hotspot compared to the other regions of the state. But has been more than 20 years since the last comprehensive study of amphibians in the area.
UAF Graduate Student Joshua Ream hopes to update the record with an inventory of amphibian populations in the Stikine River watershed this summer. He’s started a crowdfunding campaign to help him reach his goal.
“I hope to raise $1,000 by May 31 to cover the costs of field work,” he said. “The work will be conducted regardless of the success of the crowdfunding. But a successful campaign will greatly enhance the scope of this and other project components.”
Ream says amphibians act as the proverbial canary in the coalmine, giving advance warning of changes in aquatic ecosystems. “Changes in mean annual temperatures, numbers of frostless days, and levels of human activity are likely to cause changes in the distribution of amphibian species,” he says. “Colonization of new amphibian species, the threat of invasive species, several of which have established populations in southeast Alaska, and the spread of amphibian diseases will also present new problems for natural resource managers.”
The work also benefits the UA Museum of the North, as Ream’s passion for herpetological research has already produced great additions to the museum’s collections, according to Aquatics Curator Andres Lopez.
“Thanks to his ongoing field research in the Stikine and his leadership role in the Alaska Herpetological Society, the museum collections are becoming increasingly valuable resources for the study and management of Alaska’s amphibians.”
More information about Josh’s crowdfunding campaign here.
This just in from our Mammals Curator Link Olson:
Jon Nations, an undergraduate student in the museum’s Mammalogy Department, took first place at UAF’s Research Day 2013 symposium for his presentation showing that red-backed voles don’t read the literature and instead think they can climb trees. Jon will present the results of his ongoing research in Philadelphia next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists.
Jon received a $1,000 prize, bringing the total amount of funding he’s been awarded for this project to $12,000. Congratulations Jon!
VIVA LA WINTER? Fairbanks could get four inches of snow today, followed by an arctic cold front. Here in the Interior of Alaska, we’re prepared to go from winter directly into summer. We’ll just skip the spring.
Here’s a link to the local newspaper’s story about the snow.
SHARING THE VIEW - Thanks to (clockwise from top) Pete Dronkers, Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, and Michael Phelps for their #DenaliView. Share your favorite photos of North America’s tallest mountain with the museum. We’ll feature it in our special exhibit Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain, opening in May.
Details here: http://bit.ly/15N5Czt
ANOTHER LAYER OF THE PUZZLE - Exhibitions & Design Coordinator Steve Bouta glues the another layer to the Denali model. In our next special exhibit, Denali Legacy, an animated map will be projected onto the model to illustrate more than a century of climbing on North America’s tallest peaks.
