Art Culture Politics
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Hashtag This
WNYC is running a #wildnyc project, urging listeners to submit photos or audio of wild animals and plants discovered in the city. The basic idea is that folks send in images and our panel of experts help them identify the thing. Some submitters already know they’ve got, of course. I’ve been deputized to help out…
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Join, Or Die
Some of the Water Snakes (Nerodia sipedon) seen recently soaking up the sun at Great Swamp NWR. Relax, it’s harmless — it’s just yawning.My title is a reference is to Ben Franklin’s 1754 cartoon of the colonies in the shape of a dismembered snake, for today is primary day here in New York. Normally, the…
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Fabulous
Ohara Donshu – Blind Men Appraising an Elephant, early 19th century. Ink and colors on paper, Overall: 92 x 46 1/2 in. (233.7 x 118.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Asian Art Council, Mr. and Mrs. Willard G. Clark, Georgia and Michael de Havenon, Mr. and Mrs. Greg Fitz-Gerald, Dr. and Mrs. George Liberman,…
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Many Forests Gone
Eric Rutkow’s American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation is a history of America’s woodlands. It is therefore a history of loss: the great forests that once stretched from the Atlantic to beyond the Mississippi were certainly touched in part by native Americans, who burned for deer parks and plots for seasonal…
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Calling Elk Home
And after a long struggle, I finally found a home up here on the Harbor Hill Moraine, which meant I finally found a home for Wendy Klemperer’s plasma-cut steel sculpture of a calling elk. [The rich plum, or, as I like to think of it, the wine dark sea, of this wall does not reproduce…
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Beetlemania
Zane York‘s superb rhinoceros beetle now joins my natural history wall. (This photo was shot through the glass of the frame, so forgive the reflections.) I’ve known Zane for several years and have written here about his work. So there are now two beetles on the wall. A throw pillow with a mass-produced beetle pattern…
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Whalers, Ho!
During the First World War, whale oil was used to make glycerin for explosives. The irony here is leviathan: huge numbers of whales were killed so that parts of them could be used to slaughter huge numbers of humans. Other fats could be used for glycerin, but the British didn’t want to use these other…
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Atlantic Sturgeon
I recently added this reduction print by Lisa Studier to my natural history art collection. This is not a bad representation of the colors of the original: the combination of blue fish in purply water on black paper is winning. I once saw a yard-long dead Sturgeon on the Far Rockaway beach. It was all…
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Sweet Spot Soured
Neither too close nor too far from the sun, Earth has been described as a “Goldilocks planet” because it’s just right. The term is also used for similar planets, those of the over 2000 exoplanets now discovered that are situated just right, too. More formally, planets in sweet spot orbits are in the “circumstellar habitable…
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Humboldt
Across the street from the southeastern corner of the Museum of Natural History is the Naturalists’ Gate to Central Park. Besides it is this massive bust of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the great German explorer, naturalist, and geographer. The bronze was unveiled on the 100th anniversary of his birth as part of the world-wide celebrations of his…
Backyard and Beyond 