Past Events

This exhibition brings to light for the first time an archive of images that illustrate the formation of our modern definition of nature. William Beebe (1877–1962) was one of America's greatest popularizers of ecological thinking and biological science. Beebe literally took the lab into the jungle, rather than the jungle to the lab. The Department of Tropical Research was pioneering in that, under Beebe’s direction, women were hired as lead scientists and field artists. Artist Isabel Cooper, joining in 1919, publicly relished her opportunity to travel through the jungles of Guyana juggling a “vivid serpent or tapestried lizard in one hand, and the best grade of Japanese paintbrush in the other.” The structure of The Drawing Center’s exhibition will mirror the two salient stages of the Department of Tropical Research's investigations: jungle field station work and floating laboratories for marine biology —revealing that artists and scientists worked closely and productively in the near past and that scientists once understood art as a valuable tool for promoting ecological thinking to a broad public.

Professor Rose Holz examines the life of Dr. Robert L. Dickinson (1861-1950), sexologist, gynecologist, artist extraordinaire (and highly active Academy Fellow), investigating the hugely influential Birth Series sculptures he created in 1939 with fellow artist Abram Belskie. The Birth Series illustrates the process of human development from fertilization through delivery. First displayed to much fanfare at the 1939-1940 New York City World's Fair, the sculptures were reproduced in a variety of forms and sent out to medical teaching institutions and public health museums across the nation and the globe. Their effect, moreover, cannot be underestimated. The Birth Series both shaped modern gynecological education for aspiring practitioners and educated lay individuals in matters of pregnancy and reproduction and gave rise to new understandings of pregnancy radically different from those that held sway in the 1800s. In doing so, it also helped create the language and imagery central to modern reproductive politics.

Explore a unique perspective on post-traumatic stress disorder and war with Academy Fellow Randi Epstein as she discusses the medical and psychological aspects of conflict with two veteran war correspondents, journalist and writer Judith Matloff and photographer Robert Nickelsberg. The conversation will explore Matloff’s No Friends but the Mountains: Dispatches from the World’s Most Violent Highlands. Nickelsberg, a TIME magazine contract photographer for 25 years, accompanied Matloff on several trips. His photographs will be on display as the panel discusses capturing war images with an eye to the physical and psychological trauma suffered by soldiers and civilians. Books will be available for purchase at the event.