Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Science and art in dialogue: Pratt Manhattan Gallery hosts Dr. Rachael Winfree

Posted 02 Feb 2017 / 0
NECTAR event square

I am proud to have contributed to an exciting event happening next Thursday, February 9th, 2017 at 6 pm at Pratt Manhattan Gallery. For the past two months this prominent on-campus gallery has featured a show called Nectar: War upon the Bees. The show contains a great variety of works that engage questions of agricultural sustainability, human relationships with nature, and the future of our human-impacted ecosystems.

Just after this show opened I was contacted by Nick Battis, Director of Exhibitions at the gallery, to explore ways of engaging some of the science that relates to this show. We worked together to identify Dr. Rachael Winfree as a person whose scientific expertise could shed light on the works in Nectar, and we are thrilled that she will be delivering a lecture centered on human relationships with pollinators. Dr. Winfree’s lab does research on pollinators and pollination services, how biodiversity yields ecosystem services, community networks between plants and their pollinators, and conservation/restoration of pollinators. I am very excited to hear what she has to say about threats to pollinators, as these threats are a major theme of the Nectar show. I spend a lot of time talking with my students about the relationship between normative stances and scientific discoveries, and I expect that Dr. Winfree’s talk will illuminate a lot of the science that does (and perhaps does not) underpin the normative stances taken by works in the show.

There’s also an “eco-political cabaret” called THE BUZZ that will take place after Dr. Winfree’s talk. I don’t know a lot about what this will be, but apparently it will be a raucous engagement with the works and themes of the Nectar show.

This event is open to the public and free. A full poster for the event can be downloaded here. Please come!

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Art & Design, Biodiversity Loss, Community Ecology, Film & Video, Food, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Hymenoptera, Installation Art, Interactions, Mutualism, Photography, Pollination, Pollution, Pratt Institute, Science in Art & Design, Sculpture, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture

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