The Everhart Museum, located in Scranton, celebrated its centennial on Friday, Feb. 1, with the unveiling of three new exhibits. The exhibits, which all support the same theme, are the beginning of a new relationship forging art, science and history as one. For the past two years, Nezka Pfeifer has worked as the curator at Everhart. More than a year ago, staff, alongside Pfeifer and Lauren White, director of development and communications at Everhart, began compiling exhibits around the theme of birds and interconnectedness. Placing emphasis on the concerns oriented with bird extinction and the effects it will mean for society, the exhibits also depict the cultural and inspirational significance made evident by these creatures, especially to the museum’s late founder, Dr. Isaiah Everhart.
In the beginning, the museum was a science-based institution containing collected specimens from Everhart, the late ornithologist.
In 1908, the collection of birds transformed when Everhart began installing art and cultural collections from patrons and friends. After his death in 1911, Everhart’s tradition and love for birds continued, and now, through the inspiration of Pfeifer, his birds take flight again.
“We are honoring Everhart’s tradition by showing how birds can come together, and perhaps looking at birds and our own lives in a slightly different way,” said Pfeifer.
“The Flocks & Feathers: Birds in Science, Culture, and Art” main exhibit includes physical bird displays, cultural bird materials from eighth-seventh century B.C. and modern art interpretations of different mediums inspired by birds.
In conjunction, two other exhibits follow the communal theme portrayed by the main exhibit. While birds play a significant role in the exhibits, the mediums of display are far from limited. Sixteen local and outside artists contributed to the installations in the main exhibit, each providing their own perspectives that become unified in Everhart’s message to educate.
Some mediums include modern art designed from silverware in the shape of wings, and others, ethnographic aspects of South American, North American, African and Asian cultures. The installments, as Pfeifer explained, incorporate different perspectives of society’s view on birds, not only as creatures of the sky, but also as symbolic of how we view ourselves. Each artist, like each bird, becomes a representation of the diversity of cultures.
Whether an avid birdwatcher or not, the exhibits serve to make the viewers think. Thematically contributing to the bird theme is the “In the Field: Birding & Research In Lackawanna Country” exhibit located in the basement of Gallery One.
The field exhibit comprises of research and data found by many local scientists and birding theorists who have studied resident and migratory birds found in Northeastern Pennsylvania. On discussing migratory patterns with the mating and raising of offspring, Pfeifer said, “I am amazed, personally, at the complexity and innate knowledge of birds.”
The main exhibit, “marrying art, history, and science,” as Pfeifer explained, is located on the second-floor Maslow galleries. The bird displays are ordered in a geographical sequence of migratory patterns. The third exhibit, also located in the basement of Gallery One, is called “Interactive: Isaiah’s Corner: Birds Of a Feather.” The exhibit, created for children in order to promote education through the senses of interactivity, is a perfect scenario, whereas in the other two exhibits, touching material is prohibited.
Though the theme of birds may seem lackluster, the symbolic nature of the disciplines combined is inspiring.
“Many cultures believe that birds can fly between earth and heaven as messengers of God,” said Pfeifer.
In light of the symbolism, Pfeifer expressed that all can enjoy the exhibits because they seek to inform and entertain, constantly setting in motion our own questions of life and flight.
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go:
What: “The Flocks & Feathers: Birds in Science, Culture, and Art”
When: Fri., Feb. 1-Jun. 1
Where: Everhart Museum, 1901 Mulberry St., Scranton
Admission: $5 adults/$3 seniors & students/$2 children 6-12/Everhart Museum members free
Info: 570.346.7186