Events

The Human Genome Project has already revolutionized medicine. Many of us, and certainly our children, will make personal health decisions using genetic/genomic information. Biodiversity science is likely to experience the same revolution. From basic research on organisms to simple taxonomic identification of specimens through to real-time environmental monitoring at ecosystem scales, genomic technology and data will change how we do our science. The Smithsonian is leveraging this opportunity in multiple ways—in its research institutes, core facilities, and especially as it affects strategic planning for living and museum collections. The Global Genome Initiative has just completed its first year of operations. It will be exciting to review its accomplishments to date as well as to share and discuss its plans for the future.

Please join us for the webcast of a special session of Managing Cultural Heritage in a Climate Change(d) Future with keynote addresses by Ewan Hyslop, Historic Environment Scotland, and Adam Markham, Union of Concerned Scientists. The Smithsonian Institution and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) are convening a UK-US Heritage Science Workshop in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the AHRC, the UK Research Council that funds research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities. The session of presentations and panel aims to identify the key challenges of sustainable heritage management in changing times. More importantly, it will explore how the arts and humanities and the sciences can learn from each other and collaborate to define new areas of research and new solutions.

Karen Lemmey, Curator of Sculpture at Smithsonian American Art Museum, will discuss Measured Perfection: Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave, an exhibition that explores the inner workings of the studio of Hiram Powers (1805–1873), an American sculptor who rose to international fame after moving to Florence, Italy in 1837.  The display draws from an extensive collection of Powers’ sculptures and tools the Smithsonian acquired directly from his Florentine studio in 1968. A key object in the exhibition is the life-size plaster of Powers’ Greek Slave, the most highly acclaimed sculpture of the nineteenth century, so famous that Powers applied for a U.S. patent on the composition.

Powers was among the most innovative sculptors of the nineteenth century, eagerly adapting long-standing sculpture traditions to new technologies of his age. He employed various methods to replicate his sculptures, from the pointing machine—a clever, patented mechanical device used to translate plaster models into multiple marble replicas, to the highly controversial practice of body casting.  This illustrated presentation offers a virtual tour of the exhibition Measured Perfection and considers parallels between nineteenth-century replication methods and modern-day 3D scanning and printing technologies.

Measured Perfection: Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Presented by award recipients of the Smithsonian Institute for Biodiversity Genomics-Global Genome Initiative (SIBG-GGI) Award Program

The SIBG-GGI awards seek to promote scholarly activities that advance the vision of Smithsonian Biodiversity Genomics: an open community dedicated to collaborative multidisciplinary discovery, exploration, and application of genomic information to increase and diffuse knowledge, understanding, and sustainability of global biodiversity.

On May 6 half of the awardees will present on their research with the remaining half presenting on June 17 for the second and final round of lightning talks.

Forty-seven proposals were submitted from 41 PIs representing 6 Smithsonian or affiliated research units for a total request of $1.9M. After a thorough peer-review process, 17 awards totaling approximately $360,000 have been made. These projects include research that will advance collecting, sequencing, and analyzing the earth’s biodiversity using genomic technologies.

To learn more about these programs visit:

• Smithsonian Institute for Biodiversity Genomics
• Global Genome Initiative
• or email contactbiogenomics@si.edu

Joanna Marsh
The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum

October 2014 to February 2015, the American Art Museum presented The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art, an exhibition exploring the complex interplay between human and avian life. Sparked by the confluence of two major environmental anniversaries in 2014–the centennial of the passenger pigeon’s extinction and the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the exhibition examined our evolving relationship with the natural world, from conquest of the land to conservation of it, through the work of twelve contemporary artists. A vivid selection of paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures introduced visitors to contemporary avian imagery and examined the significance birds play in history, nature and culture. Inspired by the Smithsonian’s long-standing commitment to avian studies and its current emphasis on interdisciplinary programing, the exhibition grappled with issues of biodiversity loss and species conservation while simultaneously reveling in the visual pleasure of birds and the art they inspire.

Pierre Comizzoli
Director, Grand Challenges Consortia for the Sciences
Reproductive Physicologist, National Zoological Park/Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

Effective storage of living biological samples is critical for successful health care, agro-industry, and research. Nowhere are activities booming more than in biobanking for clinical, regenerative and reproductive purposes, including in the rapidly growing biomarker field where DNA sequences, RNAs, peptides and antibodies are being used for disease surveillance, forensics, medical diagnoses and treatments. These collective efforts rely on cryopreservation – suspending biophysical and biochemical reactions through low temperatures followed (when needed) by specimen warming. Biomaterials have to be stored at subzero temperatures in electrical (-80°C) freezers or liquid nitrogen (-196°C) containers. Given the costs and limitations related to freezing temperatures, it seems prudent to consider new ways to safely, simply and economically preserve living biomaterials.

Arthur Molella
Director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
National Museum of American History

In keeping with the Smithsonian’s original mission to increase human knowledge, efforts have been made in recent years to revive and encourage innovation around the Institution. This effort raises a general question: What does it take to create a fertile environment for innovation? The Lemelson Center’s upcoming exhibition, Places of Invention, represents the culmination of many years of research and documentation on conditions conducive to successful invention and innovation in the U.S. and globally. Through  examples from past and present, “Habits and Habitats of Inventors” presents some of our general findings about the ecosystem of invention. We hope these findings will also provide useful context for the Smithsonian’s attempts to revitalize itself as a leading place of innovation.

G. Wayne Clough
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution

As Earth’s climate changes, the accompanying challenges are more complex, prompting the Smithsonian to recently unveil its first Institution-wide statement on climate change. Of the nearly 500 Smithsonian scientists who work around the world, many are delving into the ways that changing climate affects us all, whether looking to the Eocene era 56 million years ago or investigating the modern era known as the Anthropocene, or Age of Humans.

Join Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough for a discussion of climate change through his perspective as a trained geotechnical engineer and see how the Smithsonian examines it through multiple lenses: convening thought leaders with the Grand Challenges Consortia’s symposium, Living in the Anthropocene: Prospects for Climate, Economics, Health, and Security; measuring real-time coastal change with global marine and terrestrial monitoring stations; analyzing the past 6 million years of climate change that spurred major adaptations in our ancestors; and much more.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Grand Challenges Consortia invite you to consider how humans are transforming the climate and environments of the Earth at an accelerating rate through agriculture, urbanization, transportation, the use of fossil fuels, and many other activities. Our global imprint, and the certainty that more than seven billion people will profoundly change the environment and biota of the planet for many generations to come, have led many scientists to recognize a new period of geological time called the Anthropocene, or Age of Humans. Restoring Anthropocene environments to pre-industrial conditions may be impossible, but the future need not be apocalyptic if we act soon. To make a livable Anthropocene, we must use our scientific knowledge to forecast environmental change and develop more resilient societies and cultural institutions that can adapt to the changes we can no longer avoid. This symposium features the views of leaders in the fields of climate, health, economics, and security who will consider the problems we face and offer possible solutions.

Speakers included James J. Hack, Director of the National Center for Computational Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that provides high performance computing resources for tackling scientific grand challenges; Rachel Kyte, Group Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change at The World Bank; George Luber, Epidemiologist and Associate Director for Climate Change at the Centers for Disease Control; and Admiral Thad Allen, former 23rd Commandant of the USCG and coordinator of the federal response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Following each talk, a panel of Smithsonian scholars and thinkers discussed the issues raised by the presentation. A summation of the day’s discussion was provided by Thomas L. Friedman, award winning author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times.

Download Event Program
The full symposium is available here as a YouTube playlist.

Emmett Duffy
Director, Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network
Office of the Under Secretary for Science

When I was born the ocean was still a mysterious and often frightening wilderness. Few people had yet breathed underwater, sailors traveled hundreds of miles without seeing a sign of humanity, and many scoffed at the idea that the sea could be depleted of fish. Those days are gone. In a short 50 years the human population has doubled to 7 billion, our appetites have grown even faster, and advances in every field of science have uncovered a picture of the ocean's depths formerly unimaginable. That picture is both exhilarating and sobering. It’s now clear that humans are the principal force of nature in the seas as on land, and that the future will require active management of nature on a planetary scale. Effective management in turn urgently requires a new paradigm of science that integrates globally, across disciplines, and that takes a rigorous approach to human behavior and ecology.

Odile Madden
Research Scientist
Museum Conservation Institute

The capacity of humans for technology is central to the Anthropocene. We manipulate the earth’s resources to create “useful” things on a massive scale, thereby causing changes globally. Toward the end of the Industrial Revolution, coincident with many other indicators of the Anthropocene, there began a material revolution whereby naturally occurring polymers, like rubber and cotton, were recognized as having interesting properties and great commercial potential. So began an iterative innovation process of seeking uses for these substances, discovering their shortcomings, and working to overcome those weaknesses through experimentation. By the mid 20th century the Plastic Age was well underway; synthetic polymers were increasingly common, transforming our lives in profound, mundane, and amusing ways. Though pervasive and terrifically useful, plastic is still a young, astonishingly diverse, and evolving material. Critical to the innovation process is recognition of its successes and also the tradeoffs, many of which only become apparent with time—material failure, resource competition and depletion, waste management, and risks to human health and the environment, for example. The evolution of plastic shows that these are complex issues and that tension over unexpected consequences also can motivate change and identify targets for innovation.

Tim Johnson
Associate Director for Museum Programs
National Museum of the American Indian

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, or “The Words That Come Before All Else,” is an ancient cultural supplication that serves to remind and instruct its adherents of their relationship to other life forms and the natural laws that govern the forces and energies of existence. It is a value system based upon ecological knowledge and intrinsically contains principles and morals intended to guide human behavior.

The Thanksgiving Address is an expression of empathic tradition—an indigenous cultural convention that nurtures emotional and intellectual connections and understandings within human beings in order to diminish distinctions between the self and the other.

All things are connected. We know that all life forms, including humans, share matter that is present elsewhere within our world and within the universe. However, beyond the recognition of our shared physical makeup, the elements out of which we are made and which enable us to live (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, etc.), resonates within empathic tradition the responsibility to sensibly engage and communicate the reality of our existence and to diffuse knowledge for the benefit of future generations.

How we inform and shape societal culture and apply ourselves individually and collectively based upon the prevailing evidence will determine our future. Culture plays every bit as important a role as science in addressing the challenges of life in the Anthropocene.

Dr. Christine France
Research Physical Scientist
Museum Conservation Institute

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released its Fifth Assessment Report providing the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. This IPCC report includes new information about the physical basis for climate change and potential anthropogenic influences contributing to that change.

While the majority of findings are quite robust, the IPCC has identified weaknesses in critical areas of understanding. As the Smithsonian moves into a new era of awareness and focus on global change, our role in the international effort to understand climate change warrants consideration. While we already have several programs focused on global and climate change, which areas can make the most impact on this important topic?

The talk focuses on the areas of weakness, as identified by the IPCC, in which the Smithsonian is already poised to emerge as a much-needed leader. The framework and analytical capabilities within the Smithsonian were also discussed, and a dialogue was opened about our future in international global climate change research.

Dr. Rick Potts
Director of the Human Origins Program
National Museum of Natural History

The course of human evolution has forged in our species a fundamental resilience founded on modifying the surroundings. This aspect of human nature evolved intimately in the dynamic natural world, making Homo sapiens a global species proficient in reshaping nature by altering landscapes, resources, water, atmosphere—and ourselves—in unprecedented ways.

The greatest challenge of the anthropogenic Earth is to redefine responsibilities and frameworks to live by. Each area across the sciences, history, arts and culture can have an indispensable role in framing the central principles of life in the Anthropocene. The ongoing discovery of human origins provides an example.

This talk begins to explore principles that may turn the distresses over unintended consequences into pragmatic, intended and deeply meaningful future consequences. An evolving ethic of resilience aligned with present realities and with new moral responsibilities needs to replace an ethic based on preservation and imprecise standards of sustainability.

Dr. Igor Krupnik
Curator of the Arctic and Northern Ethnology and Head of Ethnology Division
Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History

Sea ice—frozen saltwater—is a key component of the polar environment and the planetary system. Historically, sea ice is a domain of physical and natural scientists, oceanographers, climate modelers, and also of navigators and engineers. This lecture offers a different perspective on Arctic ice as an increasingly pressing focus for social and humanistic research, and as a focus of public interest.

In the areas where polar residents regularly use the ice for transportation, hunting or communal activities, they also create a particular cultural “scape” made of specific indigenous terminologies, age-old place names, stories, trails, navigation marks and other signs of human presence. Today, cultural “ice-scapes” of polar people are threatened by the global warming and by the progressive language and knowledge loss.

As the Arctic may soon become ice-free in summer, new competition is certain to emerge for the diminishing remnants of the polar ice among indigenous residents, wildlife managers, environmentalists, industries, and other players who have conflicting visions of ice and its primary use.

Dr. Patrick Megonigal
Deputy Director, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Humans have always settled near estuaries and coastal seas, and are highly concentrated near the coast to this day. Human activity has fundamentally changed the biology, geology and hydrology of the coasts through the decline of some species and the introduction of other species, redistribution of sediments, nutrient enrichment and land reclamation. The scale of these impacts has grown to include planet-wide changes such as sea level rise.

It is wise to recognize that the present options for managing coastal systems are constrained by past practices, just as future options depend on the decisions we make today.

The Smithsonian Consortia hosted a symposium to address the tremendous scope of transformations now occurring on the Earth, with profound effects on plants, animals, and natural habitats. Geologists have proposed the term Anthropocene, or “Age of Man,” for this new period of planetary history. The symposium focused on the arrival and impact of this new era through the lenses of science, history, art, culture, philosophy and economics, and promoted discussion, debate and deliberation on these issues of change.

Speakers included Charles C. Mann, journalist and author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created; Sabine O’Hara, Dean of the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability & Environmental Sciences at the University of the District of Columbia; Richard Alley, Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University; and photographer and filmmaker Chris Jordan. To foster wide-ranging discussion of the issues, presentations were followed by responses from an interdisciplinary panel of scholars. The Honorable Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation, former Congressman and Senator from Colorado, provided a summation of the day’s discussion.

Download Event Program
The full symposium is available here as a YouTube playlist.

The Club of Rome and the Smithsonian Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet hosted a one-day symposium to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launching of Limits to Growth, the first report the Club of Rome published in 1972. This book was one of the earliest scholarly works to recognize that the world was fast approaching its sustainable limits, and forty years later, the planet continues to face many of the same economic, social and environmental challenges.

The morning session focused on the lessons of Limits to Growth. The afternoon session addressed the difficult challenges of preserving biodiversity, adjusting to a changing climate, and solving the societal issues now facing the planet. The symposium ended with a thought-provoking panel discussion among the speakers on future steps for building a sustainable planet.

Thanks to the Club of Rome, the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, and Pedro and Carol Cuatrecasas for their generous support of the event.

Download Event Program

Download talks:
Dennis Meadows [ppt]
Jorgen Randers [pdf]
Doug Erwin [pdf]
Richard Alley [pdf]
Neva Goodwin [pdf]

The full symposium is available here as a YouTube playlist.