Caitlin Byrne

re-animated Life I

We scientists look at our natural history collections as a great resource for our studies. Specimens tell us about life in the past (where species lived, what they looked like, how many individuals existed etc.) and let us hypothesize about the future. This is one way of looking at these dead “things” that we so meticulously curate. Artists may have a quite different view. This was greatly illustrated by a Moving Image Art class organized by Amy Youngs, Associate Professor of Art, last semester. Students visited our collections of dead things and were asked to find ways to re-animate these animals. We were amazed by the imagination of these young artists-to-be. Over the next days we will share some of the best pieces with you. Here is the first animation, Re-Animated Life by Alina Maddex: Birds and one turtle moving in their natural environment

THANK YOU Stephanie Malinich, collection manager of Tetrapods, Marc Kibbey, Associate Curator of the Fish Division, Caitlin Byrne, Collections Manager of the Division of Molluscs, and Luciana Musetti, curator of the OSU Triplehorn Insect collection for facilitating the students’ visit.

About the Author: Angelika Nelson is the outreach and multi-media coordinator at the Museum of Biological Diversity and facilitates visits of school classes and students.

*** Which of these animals is your favorite? ***

Everyday Life at the Museum-part2

Following Monday’s post, here are some illustrations of everyday life in the rest of our collections:

In the Adams lab ants are busy tending their fungi gardens. No students are working the day I stop by, but Rachelle Adams, Assistant Professor in the department of Evolution, Ecology & Organismal Biology, is happy to take a break from her computer work and she shows me the ant colonies in her lab.


In the Herbarium long-time volunteer Donna Schenk relabels some of the folders that hold the plant specimens. Taxonomy is not static, molecular studies reveal new relationships and classifications are revised. To keep the collection up-to-date and to make it easy to find each specimen we need to keep up with these changes.

In the mollusc collection I find Collection Manager Caitlin Byrne working on the computer. Student worker Trevor Smoot sorts through a bag of mussel shells which a researcher donated to the collection. With a big smile Trevor lays out the shells on top of the cabinets, apparently these are some his favorite species. Others will be identified and catalogued later.

In the fish collection Sampling Coordinator Brian Zimmerman and Assistant Curator Marc Kibbey both work on their computers.

Zoology major Elijah Williams catalogs fish specimens from a recent acquisition:

 

About the Author: Angelika Nelson is curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and the museum’s social media and outreach manager.

*** Do you have any questions? We would be happy to answer them ***