Since my return from Italy I have displayed a few images taken at two sections of the Florence Museum of Natural History. I have now assembled a selection of images from the Botanical Museum, La Specola (The Zoology Section), as well as images from my show at the Geology and Paleontology Section. All can be found above in the Menu bar and will reside there indefinitely.
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These first five, all from La Specola, attempt to show some of the museum’s diversity. Popularly known for its collection of wax anatomical models (which are mind-blowing, without a doubt!), the zoological collections that fill out the bulk of the museum are equally stunning.
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These five images are from the Botanical Museum, parts of which date back to the 1500s. It is the largest in Italy and one of the finest in the world. It is home to several herbaria, as well as many other related collections including one of botanical wax models of flowers and plants. I can only assume that, during the heyday of “wax” artists, museums were big employers.
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And along with those two sections, of course, is a selection from the Geology and Paleontology Section, all of which appeared in my September show. The show was divided into two rooms, The downstairs room (Sala Strozzi, named after a member of the Strozzi Family, one of the great rivals to the Medicis) is shown above. The effective lighting and clever panel design allowed the photographs to float in a room walled by old cabinets full of fossils.
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Part Two of the exhibit, set in an upstairs room never before opened to the public, showed my New York fossil images set against wonderful old glass cases full of invertebrate fossils.
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All in all, it was a most memorable experience.
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I have given talks in a number of various locations but never in one as great as this!
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And here are the two people responsible for all these most memorable experiences – my dear friends Dr. Elisabetta Cioppi and Dr. Stefano Dominici. Their deep understanding of the connections between art and science and their points of confluence are what enabled this exhibit to occur. And their desire to share these ideas with the greater public made the show a complete success. Their hospitality was boundless – as boundless as our affection for them.
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Thanks for visiting.
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