Review: The Romance of Ants (Museum exhibit)

Abstract

Romance of Ants (Museum exhibit). Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL. Through January 1, 2012. When actor and conservation advocate Harrison Ford recently joined forces with biologist E. O. Wilson in establishing a new science writing award, Ford said, don't think it's a surprise to anyone that the facts of science are often unpalatably presented to the general public and, because of my acquaintanceship with Dr. Wilson and having read a few of his books, I have seen what quality communication can do to make science important on a humanistic level. Wilson then added, The continuity here is storytelling. Scientists are storytellers. They just don't know how to tell a story, he laughed. (1) In natural-history institutions like the Field Museum in Chicago, the architectural space often creates its own narratives of experience. story of most visitors to the Field includes walking in the grand hall under the gaping jaws of Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, and then past Carl Akeley's famous taxidermied bull elephants frozen in fierce mid-battle. But if you were to stroll among the dimly lit labyrinth of dioramas tucked away in the animal wing of the main hall in the last few months, glowing leaf-green letters spelling A-N-T-S would undoubtedly draw you into a new space and a new story. letters come more clearly into view to reveal themselves as large agar chambers filled with harvester ants busily at work in their numerous and sinuous tunnels. Look up and around and you find yourself surrounded by a curiously large comic strip that wraps the entire length of the space, literally in the middle of a story. This is Romance of Ants, a new exhibit that tells the story of the museum's Assistant Curator Corrie Moreau and her path from a childhood peering at ants on the cracked sidewalks of New Orleans to her current research in Australia, Madagascar, and the Caribbean probing the complex ecology and evolution of the world's most widespread societies. Starting with a kindergarten photo of a small, grinning Moreau, the story continues for over 30 panels of large black-andwhite comic-style illustrations connected by a trail of wandering black ants. As the ants file along the wall, Moreau likewise makes her way through a childhood of skateboards and an adolescence of punk rock. Interspersed throughout the visual narrative are also macro-photographs showing a menagerie of formicines: weaver ants, Dracula ants, and trap-jaw ants, to name a few. These photos, by entomologist Alex Wild, work as both companions and punctuation marks in Moreau's personal story as we watch her affection for the six-legged survive the self-consciousness of teenage life and finally have the chance to bloom unabashedly in university Comic books and graphic narratives have experienced a small renaissance in recent years, with the recognition of their unique and unparalleled ability play with space, time, and text to tell a story in its full complexity. …