Upcoming Tours

Bus Tour: The Legacy of Extractive Industries in Southern Louisiana

New Orleans

Photo credit © Julie Dermansky, Julie Dermansky Photography

Organized as part of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) annual convention’s official programming, this bus tour will take participants upriver to witness the impact of industry on the environment of our region, as well as the historical transitions from plantations to refineries along the “Cancer Alley” corridor in the River Parishes.

Led by Leon Waters, founder of the Louisiana Museum of African American History and organizer of Hidden Histories tours; Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade–a citizen science organization; and Monique Verdin, tribal council person for the United Houma Nation.

Organizers & Sponsors = Antenna, The Natural History Museum, and the AAM Environment and Climate Professional Network

Learning objectives are:

  • 1 – Participants will learn about the historical and present-day effects of fossil fuel development in Southern Louisiana.
  • 2 – Participants will understand the correlation between the legacy of plantations and the subsequent environmental dilapidation of the region and its communities by petrochemical companies.
  • 3 – Participants will examine the role that institutional programming can play in documentation and dissemination of environmental issues, and how such work can support efforts of traditionally marginalized and front line communities.

 

Logistics 9am-12pm

$15.  

Bus will depart at 9am at the Convention Center and return there at 12pm.

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Tour of the American Museum of Natural History by Stuart Ewen

American Museum of Natural History, NYC, NY

Stuart Ewen is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College, and in the Ph.D. Programs in History, Sociology and American Studies at The CUNY Graduate Center (City University of New York). He is generally considered one of the originators of the field of Media Studies, and his writings have continued to shape debates in the field.

He is the author of a number of influential books, including PR! A Social History of Spin (1996) and All Consuming images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (1987; 1999). The latter provided the foundation for Bill Moyers’ 4-part, Peabody, Emmy, and National Education Association Awards winning PBS series, “The Public Mind.” PR! was a finalist for The Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1997, and provided the basis for a 4-part BBC Television Series, “The Century of the Self.” Ewen’s other books include Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (1976) and Channels of Desire: Mass /images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (also with Elizabeth Ewen. 1982; 1992). In the spring of 2001, Basic Books published a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Captains of Consciousness. His writings appear in French, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Korean and Japanese translation.

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Tour of the American Museum of Natural History by Mark Dion

American Museum of Natural History, NYC, NY

Mark Dion is known for making art out of fieldwork, incorporating elements of biology, archaeology, ethnography, and the history of science, and applying to his artwork methodologies generally used for pure science. His art uncovers the structures that govern the natural world, dissolving the boundary between nature and culture; in his view, ‘nature is one of the most sophisticated arenas for the production of ideology’.

Traveling the world and collaborating with a wide range of scientists, artists, and museums, Dion has excavated ancient and modern artifacts from the banks of the Thames in London, established a marine life laboratory using specimens from New York’s Chinatown, and created a contemporary cabinet of curiosities exploring natural and philosophical hierarchies. Dion has a longstanding interest in exploring how ideas about natural history are visualized and how they circulate in society. Dion’s work has been presented at many U.S. and international museums and galleries.

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Tour of the American Museum of Natural History by Gregory Sholette

American Museum of Natural History, NYC, NY

Gregory Sholette is an artist and writer whose publications include It’s The Political Economy, Stupid, co-edited with Oliver Ressler, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture, Collectivism After Modernism, and The Interventionists with Nato Thompson.

His recent art projects include Collectibles, Action Figures and Objects, at Station Independent Gallery, Imaginary Archive: Graz, Rotor Art Center, Graz, Austria; NY; Exposed Pipe at the American University Beirut art gallery; Torrent for Printed Matter Books in Chelsea; iDrone for cyberartspace.net; and Fifteen Islands for Robert Moses at the Queens Museum. Sholette is an Associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program at the Graduate School of Design Harvard University, a member of the Curriculum Committee of Home WorkSpace Beirut, and a faculty member of the Queens College Art Department, City University of New York where he helped establish the new MFA Concentration SPQ (Social Practice Queens): http://www.socialpracticequeens.org.

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