Earth Systems Field School
Biosphere 2 Center/Columbia University

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Exercise

Due date: Monday June 14

Background:
The Desert Museum has played a major role in ecological stewardship. It has functioned as a communication link whereby people in the Sun Belt techno-oasis of Tucson become acquainted with native biota and landscapes. The museum has been a nexus of radiating cultural influence, fostering a popular appreciation of the Sonoran Desert, as well as an active community of naturalists.

Check out their web page

Assignment:
The exhibits at the Museum establish a relationship between people and the Sonoran Desert by interpreting animals, plants, and the environment. The exhibits show a changing perspective of this relationship, because they span over thirty years of development on the Museum grounds. Your assignment is to critique and analyze a series of exhibits differing in age. This exercise may reveal how human beliefs and guiding ideas about nature and its interpretation have changed over a generation.

Focus on four exhibits, two that are old (e.g., indoor snakes, birds of prey) and two that are new (e.g., desert grassland, hummingbirds, javalinas). You are welcome to study any exhibits at the museum (the convergence ramada, the hawkmoth garden, and the lizard enclosure near the entrance are worth visiting) and you can ask docents for the age of exhibits to determine if they would fall into the old or new categories. Study the design, content and interpretive text. What beliefs do these features reveal about the visitor targeted, and the thing displayed?

Evaluate how effective each chosen exhibit is. Remember that interpretation has two component functions:

It must inspire by "enchanting".
It must inform by "explaining".

How well do your chosen exhibits perform each function?

If your chosen exhibits include animals, you may wish to comment on why people build zoos. What are some of the different goals that a zoo is intended to meet? To what extent are these goals complementary? Do the exhibits you examined meet each of these goals? What are the ethical considerations concerning keeping animals in captivity? Are these considerations mitigated by the goals achieved by the exhibits?

Your essay can be no more than two pages in length