University of Alaska Museum of the North

Popular visitor attraction, thriving research center, favorite field trip for Fairbanks youth. And a beautiful building, too.

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PHOTO ABOVE: Gail Priday installing works commissioned by the state of Alaska’s Percent for Art program at Ryan Middle School in July 2017. Photo by Brandon McGrath-Bernhard

Gail Priday is fascinated by the details of the Northern landscape. Her paintings and woodcuts highlight the treasures found in the forest, suggesting an active world that exists quietly underfoot. Her work explores both the bloom and decay of the forest floor, examining fungus, berries, and even the shadows on a snowbank. It provides a space to explore environmental elements while also ruminating on the wonder, beauty, and variety of her surroundings. Her work is featured through March 2019 in the Café Gallery at the UA Museum of the North.

Is there a theme to the artworks that you selected for this show? The pieces included in this show bring attention to the details I find most compelling about the Northern landscape. I am able to find a seemingly endless variety of subject matter in the woods around my house. There is so much variety in a small area, and there are daily and seasonal changes that continually add interest. The blooming and decaying forest floor, fungus, berries, and shadow patterns on the snow, consistently capture my attention. These easily overlooked features of the landscape hold great significance to me. They suggest an extraordinary and active world that exists quietly beside me.

Have any of the pieces been shown in public yet? This show includes new work as well as work previously exhibited at Well Street Art Company in Fairbanks and Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. There are two brand new paintings not yet shown in public, as well as several pieces that have not been exhibited in Fairbanks before now.

PHOTO ABOVE: “Decomposing Birch” by Gail Priday

Why did you pick these particular works? These pieces illustrate the wide range of subject matter available in a small area. It is a cross section of the many features I am drawn to in the woods around my home on Chena Ridge. I included works from each season because seasonal changes are such a remarkable feature of living in the Interior. This show features woodcuts alongside oil paintings. Painting allows for the use of so many colors and the inclusion of endless details, while woodcuts force me to use only the essentials. As a result, they compliment one another. The large paintings can be viewed from a distance, while the woodcuts draw you in.

What are you hoping the audience will take away from this exhibit? So many people are fascinated by the same subjects, whether they are scientists, trail runners, mushroom hunters, or berry pickers. I think many people get excited about the rapid summer growing season or the unique winter light. Anyone who spends time in the woods around Fairbanks sees decaying logs, rosehips, and shadows on the snow. I hope viewers connect with these familiar subjects, recalling times they were out in the forest doing what they love. Many viewers will be visitors who may only be in Fairbanks for a short time. It is my hope that this exhibit will add to their experience of the Northern landscape.

What inspires you as an artist? I am inspired by the things I see every day and I am fascinated by the ever changing natural world. I equate walking through the woods to treasure hunting. I frequently carry pockets full of fallen leaves, lichen covered branches, and decaying logs back to my studio. I have even had those closest to me surprise me by leaving a fungus covered log by my woodpile as a gift, or help me carry a log home.

I am also inspired by the things I cannot see, such as the microbial processes that cause the fallen logs and leaves to decay, and the spores that infiltrate the woods, causing so many interesting things to emerge. I get a jolt of inspiration anytime I go outside and see that what I saw the day before is different in some way. Finally, I find much inspiration in the work of other artists in Alaska and beyond. Spending time exploring the work, processes, and ideas of other artists is crucial to a strong studio practice.

What does it mean to have your work on display at the UA Museum of the North? It is an honor! For the past three years I have worked at the museum as the school and community liaison as part of the education and public programs team. I am fortunate to spend my days here and know many of the artworks and objects well. Showing my work in the same space that houses artwork I have so often studied and admired is really exciting. I am also excited about having a new and varied audience for my work. The museum attracts visitors from all over the world, and the café is frequented by many UAF employees and students who may or may not be familiar with my work. It is my hope that having my art on display in the café will give many visitors a unique perspective of the Alaskan landscape.

Priday has taught in the UAF Art Department and is the school and community liaison in the museum’s education department. You can learn more about her artwork at https://gailpriday.com/home.html

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PHOTO ABOVE: From “Cradle of Kleptocracy” by Madara Mason

I CONTAIN MULTITUDES -- Madara Mason is an eclectic artist. Her work combines paper, beads, found objects, dressmaking patterns, grant rejections, prescription labels, block prints, magazine and book cutouts, and traditional media like acrylic paint and ink. Born and raised in the South, Mason moved to Alaska in 1994 and began painting the animals and plants she found in her backyard. Her work is featured through July 2018 in the Café Gallery at the UA Museum of the North.

Is there a theme to the artworks that you selected for this show? So many artists have made powerful political statements regarding women's work, and I don't feel I need to repeat those statements. But by the same token, in rejecting that emphasis, I might ALSO be guilty of rejecting women's work as irrelevant. The traditions I allude to in my work are more meaningful than the generic label of women's work: the reuse of old materials, mending the broken, using patterns to bind a community through the use of shared imagery, and constructing objects that carry the memories of a family or individual.

I also think there's an element of landscape and flora and fauna in these works that I'm hoping won't be overlooked. Landscapes are so often tidy recreations of a singular individual's (often romanticized) perspective. In my experience nature isn't tidy at all and it changes constantly, especially the landscapes you find in Fairbanks and the surrounding areas, which are often as urban as they are wild. You can't really go on a hike or a walk or a kayak trip without coming across bits of wrappers, labels, odd trinkets with no clear purpose, pieces of tools or cars, remnants of junk mail, and the remains of the pipeline industry. Most of these paintings are my attempt to reconcile that detritus of urban life with the wild, organic forms that spring up inside of it and all around it, which would be a more honest vision of my local landscape as I see it.

I guess I'm trying to hone in on the realities of all these multiple landscapes, multiple identities, multiple perspectives, and multiple methods of constructing a work of art. There's a voice in American culture right now asking me to define myself as one thing: one race, one origin, one gender, one religion, one nationality, one political party. This is my refusal to define myself and my world in such singular terms. Like Whitman said, "I contain multitudes" and those multitudes sometimes contradict one another.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" "Song of Myself" Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Have any of the pieces been shown in public yet? Most of them have been shown at Well Street or in the Alaska House, but there are a few new pieces that no one has seen, and I'm really excited about the new audience I'll have through the Museum.

Why did you pick these particular works? There are few opportunities locally to show my larger works, so I submitted most of the recent large pieces I currently have in my studio which carry this theme of "women's work reworked".

What are you hoping the audience will take away from this exhibit? Each of these pieces is meant to reveal themselves fully over time. They're pretty packed with minutiae that I've woven together according to a personal narrative, but I think a story will emerge for anyone who looks at the pieces long enough. 

What inspires you as an artist? The materials themselves (paint, ink, paper) but also what I refer to as "genesis objects" things like quilts, maps of footpaths through public spaces, math problems on graph paper, button blankets, a row of tiny masks in the Museum collections. Any place where humans have taken something apart and refashioned it into a meaningful pattern is inspiration to me.

What does it mean to be able to reach the summer visitors from outside the community? As an artist who loves to work on heavy wooden panels, getting my original work to an outside audience is challenging and cost-prohibitive. Etsy and other online venues have helped me get print reproductions and other printed items into the homes of thousands of people all over the world at this point, but that feels very anonymous sometimes. It's an entirely different animal to have my work presented in the context of the Alaskan artists' tradition, as a distinct voice within a particular lineage.  

Mason teaches 2D digital design and a professional practices course for the UAF Art Department. You can learn more about her artwork at www.madaramason.com.

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IDEAS ARE EVERYWHERE -- Jamie Smith is the creator of the cartoon feature Nuggets, which has appeared weekly in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner since 1988. Originally from western and central New York, Smith currently teaches drawing at UAF and creates freelance illustrations out of his cabin, which he shares with his wife and cats. The artist is currently featured in the museum’s Cafe Gallery.

Is there a theme to the artworks that you selected for this show? Pretty much a random rock-skipping across half a dozen years of published work. Given the time frame of the exhibit there’s a slightly seasonal skew, otherwise it’s the usual Fairbanks foibles. One of the motivations behind surveying the field of works produced over the years is to assess how much potential material is suitable to publish in an upcoming collection.

Do they speak to each other in some way? When viewed as a whole generally all of the cartoons in this series under the Nuggets title will touch upon some attribute of life in the arctic and/or the critters that inhabit it, including the people. Individually they exemplify one of the unique aspects of the newspaper feature: the unpredictable and diverse range of subject matter I get to touch on, which mirrors my erratic, spontaneous attention span across eclectic topics of interest.

Why did you pick these particular works? I cater to the demographics of my readership, which is a nice way of saying you won’t get it if you’re not from here. This limits my audience but retains a unique regional flavor that isn’t as homogenized as syndicated strips. Many selections were culled from the archives purely on account of their popularity, some also highlight interesting scenarios, reflecting a love of basic drawing. Admittedly there are a couple included by virtue of the fact that I alone find them funny. You’ll just have to trust me on that.

Tell us more about your decision to exhibit them in two rows, one on top of the other. You mentioned that this might evoke a comic strip. Even though the bulk of my work is in the form of a single-panel gag cartoon, one of the hallmarks of sequential art (the juxtaposition of image + text) is the gutter between panels in a comic strip. While hanging the pieces, it occurred to me that the spaces in between the framed imagery link together a narrative -- both personal and about the lifestyle of the Interior.

As an artist with a regularly published series, what does it mean to show your artwork in an exhibit? Comics are enjoying an upswing in popularity and critical appreciation. As a unique art form, it has an increasingly strong presence on the literary front in bestsellers lists, especially with the rise of graphic novels and more mature, sophisticated narratives gaining the public’s acceptance in the public. Comics – especially in a gallery setting - can also showcase all of the fundamental aesthetic elements of any drawing: composition, value, color, line and texture etc. Also, given the temporal nature of print and the short-term attention span of social media. these pieces can occupy space + time outside of the constant flood of imagery that saturates modern life.

You bring your drawing class to the museum. Can you tell us a little more about how you use the galleries in your teaching? Ideas are everywhere. Every room is basically a big box full of stuff to mentally play with, not to mention what happens when people are added to the mix. Aside from the simple opportunity to practice basic drawing skills and gather reference sketches, cultural repositories such as museums are ripe, ready-made sources of inspiration to literally draw from.

This presentation is part of a rotating schedule of exhibits featuring UAF adjunct artists. For more information about the artworks on display, please contact the artist, Jamie Smith.

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Putting up an evergreen tree to celebrate winter festivals of all kinds has been a tradition for thousands of years. This year the museum’s tree features ornaments donated by Grace Berg Schaible, who passed away in June.

The collection of Christmas tree ornaments is as varied as her polar bear art collection, featured in the museum’s special exhibit, Polar Passion.

There are fragile crystal angels, hand-painted glass balls, and polar bears in all variety of poses and materials. ​Many are hand-crafted in Alaska while others reflect her joy for traveling all around the world.

Angela Linn, the museum’s senior collections manager of ethnology & history, spent many hours talking with Grace about her passion for collecting artwork. “​Grace never mentioned anything to me about her ornament collection, but I think she would be so touched to know that they are going to become a part of the museum's annual traditions​.”

​The objects will be added to the museum’s hands-on collection of the Ethnology & History department, which means that basic information about them is recorded in the database, but they are meant to be handled and enjoyed in a tactile way.

Linn said this collection is not just to be looked at. It will be made useful and to become part of a unique experience within the walls of the museum.​ Having these sorts of collections in museums are important so members of the public can feel engaged with the objects in personal ways.

“Objects have this unique way of recalling memories in people,” Linn said. “I hope that everyone who views the tree with this special set of ornaments will remember favorite times with Grace or with their own family at the holidays. And if we continue this tradition, hopefully the ornaments will help our museum members create new memories associated with this event.”

Visitors can see the ornaments on the tree located in the museum’s lobby through the New Year. They can also visit with some of the extensive polar artworks Schaible has donated to the museum and the people of Alaska in the special exhibit, Polar Passion.

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THE SUPER BOWL OF BOTANY

Every six years, the International Botanical Congress meets to bring scientists together from many different countries and botanical disciplines. That means mycologists (mushroom specialists) mixing with with paleobotanists and even systematics experts (the branch of biology that deals with classification and species names).

This year the 19th IBC will be held in Shenzehn, China and the museum’s herbarium curator, Steffi Ickert-Bond, will be there!

“This is the Super Bowl of botany,” she said. “The Congress is truly international in scope and the most important meeting for botanists. For example at the last Congress held in Melbourne, Australia decided that the publication of a new name of a plant no longer needs to be accompanied by a Latin diagnosis. Now it is acceptable that the description is accompanied by an English diagnosis.”

The first IBC was held in Brussels, Belgium in 1864 in conjunction with an international horticultural exhibit. The congresses provide valuable opportunities for plant scientist from around the world to share new research findings and ideas, establish international collaborations, and make new friends.

Ickert-Bond has organized two symposia for this Congress and will be giving two invited talks. She will also be presenting a poster from the Herbarium (ALA) team, “Towards a New Alaskan Flora: Integrating Paper Floras, Specimens, Observations and Taxonomic Changes.” Her attendance is supported by travel funds from the University of Alaska Fairbanks provost office, the International Association of Plant Taxonomists, and her National Science Foundation grant [NSF-160720].

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“Salmon running the birch stream (unfinished)” by Charlotte Wyncoop

We received this lovely note from a recent visitor to the UA Museum of the North and asked her if it was OK to share this story with you. She said yes! And hoped it would inspire more people to see the artwork on display at UAMN.

I wanted to thank you for the art collection on your upper floor [in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery]. The mix of craft and art in both traditional and non-traditional media was exciting and freeing for me as a hobby artist. I really enjoyed the breadth of the collection from both Native and non-native perspectives.

Seeing Alaska has renewed my itch to create. With four kids its been a struggle to find time. The midnight sun gave me opportunity while we were camped in Talkeetna, and I wanted to share my small piece of what Alaska inspired. I hope to find more time and inspiration as we vacation across this beautiful state.

In Anchorage, the red salmon had started their run and we watched them spawning. As I watched the river and saw the birch lining the banks at Talkeetna  the bark colors reminded me of both the water and the fish.

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[PHOTO ABOVE: Delicate calypso orchids (Calypso bulbosa) in Palmer, AK]

Jordan Metzgar likes ferns. During his tenure as the collection manager for the museum’s Herbarium, he focused his research on the biology of ferns. His doctoral dissertation, mentored by UAMN Herbarium Curator Steffi Ickert-Bond, examined the systematics and post-glacial migration patterns of the parsley ferns, known in the scientific world as Cryptogramma.

That doesn’t mean he never looked at other Alaska plants. A fact that became all too clear during his recent move from Fairbanks to Blacksburg, VA to take on a new challenge as the curator of Virginia Tech’s Massey Herbarium. He sent us this story about his newfound appreciation for Alaska’s plants.

The uniqueness of Alaska’s flora can easily be taken for granted. What I had come to think of as mundane and ordinary became exotic and special from afar. I realized this recently while exploring a natural area near my new home in the mountains of western Virginia. The Dismal Creek area is full of fascinating finds, like rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.) higher than my head and speckled wood lilies (Clintonia umbellulata) in bloom at my feet. As a long-time fern fanatic, my day was made with a variety of sightings, from lush royal fern and sharp cinnamon fern to the tall and stately interrupted fern.

[PHOTO ABOVE: Arctic tumbleweed lichen on Ester Dome near Fairbanks]

But something was missing. There were no Arctic tumbleweed lichens (Masonhalea richardsonii, photo above) at my feet. No delicate calypso orchids (Calypso bulbosa, top photo) to be discovered on the forest floor. Come fall, there would no hillsides blanketed in yellow aspen forests (Populus sp.) or red expanses of bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, photo below). The hordes of mosquitoes were also missing, but I was not as dismayed by that development.

[PHOTO ABOVE: Red bearberry along Wickersham Creek Trail in Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo by Jordan Metzgar]

The three thousand miles separating western Virginia from interior Alaska crosses several biomes. The drastically differing environments lead to few similarities in plant life. But I did spot one small reminder of Alaska.

The lousewort genus (Pedicularis) is well represented in Alaska with more than two dozen species occurring in a variety of flower colors and habitats. Virginia has only two species, but I did find one of them. The forest lousewort (Pedicularis canadensis, photo below) was shyly blooming along the trail as I walked by. It is only found in eastern North America so the connection to Alaska is thanks to its evolutionary cousins.

[PHOTO ABOVE: A forest lousewort in bloom along Dismal Creek in Virginia. photo by Jordan Metzgar]

There are other scattered botanical reminders of Alaska here in the mountains of Virginia. I’ll encounter them occasionally, especially when I visit cold, high-elevation microclimates. But on this one day I was happy to see a small reminder of my former home.

Jordan Metzgar is the curator of the Massey Herbarium at Virginia Tech. He was formerly the collection manager at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, where his fern puns and professional wisdom are greatly missed.

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Thanks to Curator Derek Sikes for sharing his research on Kasatochi. He’s been documenting the return of life to this Aleutian island after the volcano erupted in 2008.

Sikes just happened to visit Kasatochi in 2008, weeks before the unexpected eruption. One of the insects he collected happened to be an entirely new species to science.

Sikes joined a team of researchers who revisited the island in 2009. He wasn’t excited about the prospect, expecting an ecosystem overrun by ash and mud. They discovered some unlikely survivors, including insects living off the dead birds, fish and kelp accumulating on the beach.

“We were surprised to find that all the herbivores were wiped out and that all the insect activity was by predators and scavengers,” Sikes said. “This contradicted much of the successional ecology literature which stated that food-webs begin with plants and herbivores.”

He’s been attempting to return to the island ever since. You can learn more about what Sikes discovered in this feature story published by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Join us for the next presentation in our Museum Discovery Series, Worth a Thousand Words: Preserving Alaska’s Visual History by Curator Len Kamerling.

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OF PERSON AND PLACE -- A new show on display in the Museum Café explores landscapes and places using a variety of printmaking techniques. The artist, Karinna Gomez, graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks MFA program in 2014 and has worked at museums for more than a decade. Gomez has also participated as an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and at Galleri Christensen in Kjøllefjord, Norway. She has received several awards, including a Fulbright Grant to study in Iceland and an Individual Artist Award from the Rasmuson Foundation.

What is the story behind the collection of artworks featured in the Café? Is there a unifying theme? The prints featured in the Café Gallery express a sense of person and place through representations of high-latitude landscapes and spaces.

The printmaking techniques used to make this work include mezzotint, etching and drypoint, all intaglio copperplate processes. Most of the prints in the gallery are mezzotints, a process where the image is rendered from dark to light. Electrical substations, power plants and cell towers are the subjects of many of these prints, images rendered with bright, incised lines in dark fields.

In this series of work, I liked the ideas of unseen radio waves and information sent out into the landscape, of transmission through vast spaces, and of energy generated in the dark.

Is there anything you’d like the audience to know about the artworks? The places represented in these prints include Fairbanks, other places in Alaska, Iceland, and Norway. These are places where I’ve lived or traveled and which I’ve been drawn to thinking about in my creative process. Some images relate to a specific location while others are more invented.

For me, these prints communicate feelings of human presence and connectivity as well remoteness in our northern landscapes.

For more information about the artist, please visit her website. This show will be on display at the University of Alaska Museum of the North through July 2017.

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WINTER’S MAMMAL VISITORS -- If you’ve ever opened your door to find a moose on your lawn or driveway, you know how big they are! They can fill up the view from a picture window. Our ungulate neighbors are fun to safely observe on a winter’s day from indoors.

Whether the moose is nibbling on shrubs or blocking the path to your car, these giant herbivores are drawn to human landscapes and manicured gardens.

Moose can grow as tall as seven feet at the shoulder. They are the largest members of the deer family. And on top of that, the subspecies that lives in Alaska is the largest in the world. They live all over the state, except a few remote areas like the Arctic Slope and the Aleutians.

Moose prefer boreal forests in temperate and subarctic climates, so Alaska offers good habitat.

Museum educator Emily Koehler-Platten has been researching moose for a variety of hands-on programs in February at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. She said everything about moose is big. Even the calves.

“Newborn calves gain three to six pounds per day and can outrun a human a few days after birth. During mating season, bull moose are often too preoccupied to eat and lose a lot of weight. Bull moose also lose their huge antlers and grow a new set every year. I find that incredible.”

But why do moose grow so large? One reason is their need to stay warm during the winter. These mammals have an insulating layer of fat and protein and are efficient at getting the most out of their food. Their long legs also allow moose to wade easily through deep water or snow.

Moose spend most of their time looking for food. Adults can eat up to 70 pounds a day. Willows are an important source of nutrition, especially in the winter. In the summer, moose add fireweed (Epilobium latifolium) and a variety of other plants to their diet. They also find aquatic plants tasty and spend much of the summer eating marsh cinquefoil (Comarum palustre), along with other wetland plants.

Since they are herbivores, plants are important to moose, but the benefit goes both ways.

Herbarium collection manager Jordan Metzgar said moose play a role in the ecosystem of plants in Interior Alaska because they disperse them to new locations. “When moose eat a plant's fruit, they can travel many miles before they pass the seeds in their scat.”

Sometimes this is a bad thing. When moose eat invasive plants like white sweet clover, they can spread the seeds to new locations miles away and push out native plants. But Metzgar said moose are also a positive influence. “They spread native seeds while browsing and can change forest succession patterns by helping to establish alders (Alnus spp.).”

At the museum’s Family Day: Moose on Saturday, Feb. 11, visitors can learn more about these fascinating animals. A closely related species called Alces latifrons is featured in a reproduction of a painting by artist Jay Matternes on display in the Gallery of Alaska depicting Ice Age animals in Alaska.

This specimen from the Ikpikpuk River, North Slope, AK is 14,100 years old, the oldest recorded moose specimen in the museum’s collection. Photo by Katherine Anderson (UAMES 10922)

According to Earth sciences collection manager Katie Anderson, modern moose (Alces alces) appeared during the late Pleistocene and migrated to North America at the end of that epoch. The animals likely arrived in Alaska 14,000 years ago based on radiocarbon dating of specimens in the collection.

Moose are important to the lifestyle of many Alaska Native peoples. In the Interior, Athabascan communities have traditionally used every part of the moose. One moose can provide a large amount of meat. And even the parts that don’t appear edible are used. For example, moose nose soup is a prized delicacy.

Alaskans use parts of the moose for a variety of objects. Antlers and bones can be turned into tools. After the heart is eaten, the membrane can be used as a storage bag. The hide is used for clothing, mattresses and even canoes. Sinew, which is dried moose tendon, can be used for sewing. And people use strips of rawhide, or babiche, to make sleds and snowshoes.

Athabascan cultural values encourage hunters to show respect toward moose, other animals and toward the land itself. Success of the hunt is judged not only by  how many moose you get, but how well you respected the animal.

In contemporary Alaska, moose continue to be an important subsistence animal. Today, more people hunt moose than any other big game species in Alaska. Every year 6,000 to 8,000 moose are harvested in the state.

If you visit a museum program this month, Koehler-Platten said you can explore moose in a variety of ways:  by handling real antlers, making your own paper antler headband, exampling objects made of moose parts or making moose art. “Come any day this month to see a life-sized moose silhouette in the Family Room and add your own decorated moose track to the wall.”

The UA Museum of the North is exploring moose at Family Day: Moose on Saturday, Feb. 11 Visitors can talk with moose experts and create moose art. Admission is free for kids 14 and under, thanks to support from TOTE Maritime Alaska.

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COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS -- We are taking a cue from the popular tune “The 12 Days of Christmas” to count down these winter days and get the word out about all about the amazing Alaska artists we feature in the Museum Store. Our thanks to them for working with us to provide unique gifts and souvenirs to our visitors. And to you for supporting the museum’s research, programs, and exhibits by making purchases in the Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: This raven with a shiny bead, a one-of-a-kind sculpture by Fairbanks artist Mary Ann Fortune, is called "Rune." The museum also carries smaller ravens, including the artist's popular fledgling raven sculptures.

PHOTO ABOVE: These two ptarmigan, hand-painted wooden masks, were made by Cup'ig artist Clifton Smith from Nunivak Island.

PHOTO ABOVE: These three snowy owls by Yup'ik artists Davis Uglowook and Carson Slwooko, both from the St. Lawrence Island community of Gambell, are our version of "three French hens."

PHOTO ABOVE: These four chickadees are ornaments by Calico Cache from Eagle River, Alaska. You can find them in the Museum Store as we #CountdowntoChristmas with unique Alaska-made gifts.

PHOTO ABOVE: A set of five ... Matryoshka ... dolls are hand painted in Russia. There are a wide variety available in the Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: "On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, six geese a laying!" You can find these geese in the Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: These seven seals swimming are on our list as we #CountdowntoChristmas. They are all walrus ivory carvings by Alaska Native Artists and available at the Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: Eight maids a milking may have created eight kinds of Denali Dreams Soaps, produced in Anchorage, Alaska and available for sale in the Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: These nine ladies dancing were created by artist Lenwood Saccheus from Elim, Alaska. Soapstone figures with grouse feather fans.

PHOTO ABOVE: We found our ten lords-a-leaping in this piece by Alaska Native artist Robin Fields. He is part Inupiaq and part Haida. [We added three billikens to fill out the cast!]

PHOTO ABOVE: Eleven pipers piping was a tough one, but we decided these eleven piping hot coffee mugs and travel mugs would fit the order. These are all available in our Museum Store.

PHOTO ABOVE: These twelve drummers drumming are a variety of ivory carvings made by Alaska artists.

Visit us in person or online to learn more about these and all the specialty items we feature in the Museum Store. From Alaska-themed books and foods, to artwork, jewelry and much more. Thanks to our visitor services department for their creativity.

All photos by Jake Sirevaag

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DISCOVERING ALASKA’S PLANTS AND FUNGI -- The University of Alaska Museum of the North Herbarium (ALA) has been hosting a series of workshops to help people learn to identify the plants and fungi they encounter in their travels and in their own neighborhoods. In August, the museum invited mycologist and author Gary Laursen to lead a mushroom walk on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. More more than 50 people identified and harvested mushrooms as part of the museum's iNaturalist project called Plants and Fungi of Alaska. We asked Curator Steffi Ickert-Bond about the plant identification project and future plans to translate these activities into a grant-funded program.

1) Identifying mushrooms sometimes seems scary. People worry about eating something that will make them sick. What advice would you give people? Why is it important to learn identification skills, not just with mushrooms or edible plants, but in general?

The question itself gives an answer, identification skills can be life savers in case of two very similar looking plants. Many poisonous plants can strongly resemble an edible plant at first glance. Just to be safe, it is a good tactic to teach children to stay away from all berries and let an adult decide that the beery is safe to eat. The white clusters of baneberry are deadly poisonous. 2) What surprised you about the walk? What were some of the reactions people had to the event that stuck with you?

The turnout for this event was surprising, but more so the bounty of the harvest. There were just so many mushrooms! People brought back a number of them I had never even seen before. The range of colors was amazing. It was also very exciting to see Dr. Laursen walk us through the general ID for the major groups of mushroom, how distinct those groups really are:  the coral mushrooms, the tooth mushrooms, the boletus, the polypores, and of course the agarics, which include the fly agaric, a mushroom renowned for its toxicity and hallucinogenic properties (sometimes called the Alice-in-Wonderland mushroom).

PHOTO ABOVE: A variety of mushrooms collected on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus on display on a late-August evening.

When Gary dove into the bolete mushrooms, it was very interesting to hear his discourse of the various techniques he uses to see if a seemingly similar and potentially edible mushroom could turn out to be a species one would stay away from. Watching the discoloration on hymenium after the mushroom is cut in longitudinal sections was one of the characteristics he stressed.

PHOTO ABOVE: Gary Laursen, author and mushroom expert, talks about bolete mushrooms after a recent identification walk hosted by the Herbarium at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

3) The UAMN Herbarium (ALA) hosted a series of identification workshops this summer. What are you plans for this project? How can people get involved as volunteers and participants? We are trying to foster a cadre of excited volunteer botanists and outdoor enthusiasts to make plant observations and document the flora of Alaska while they are out and about. Even with the 260,000 specimens we currently have in the herbarium collection at UAMN, still many large spatial gaps exist on the map of Alaska.

Although Alaska is relatively species-poor at a per-site level, its vast size, special geologic history, and relatively low level of historical plant exploration means that it contains perhaps the highest proportion of undiscovered species of flora in the United States. With climate changing faster in Alaska than any other U.S. state, we are seeing major vegetation shifts, including tundra shrubification and the increasing incidence of catastrophic fires. Species-level monitoring is a vital part of assessing what is going on.

With the decrease in federal funding for this kind of research, we think the only way we can document biodiversity is by involving the general public to submit their photographs and make observations to the museum’s iNaturalist site. We also hope to foster support from the National Science Foundation. The project will continue to run through the fall of 2016. Contact the herbarium if you are interested to get on a mailing list and watch our Facebook page for announcements of upcoming events.

4) Several of the museum's curators are involved with identification events like BioBlitz and "walks" that engage citizen scientists. Is there any attempt to coordinate this outreach among different departments at the museum? What is the value of citizen science for museum work? I am sure we are going to have more organized, collaborative events in the future. The Herbarium wants to capitalize on the enthusiasm to develop a citizen science initiative, hopefully spurring new collecting, and to also recruit trained plant observers (para-botanists) to help fill in some of the blanks spots on the ARCTOS plant specimen distribution map, and maybe even to generate some data relevant to climate change.

While the Bioblitz approach takes a more wholistic view and collects everything in a particular area, we feel most comfortable with working with our organism(s) of choice - plants and fungi. iNaturalist is the obvious platform for collecting plant observations. It’s an excellent tool, with all sorts of capabilities for data management. It even contributes ‘research grade’ observations to GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). We started a project on iNaturalist, Plants and Fungi of Alaska, where we can coordinate teams and collect relevant information in one place.

You can get involved by joining the UAMN Herbarium’s iNaturalist project online or on an application downloaded to your mobile electronic device. 

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LISTENING TO THE EARTH -- It's been ten years since composer John Luther Adams created The Place Where You Go to Listen at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

His vision was to provide a space for people to connect to the Earth. Since then, almost a million visitors have had a chance to listen to the choral rhythms of daylight and darkness, the pulse of the phases of the moon, the drumming vibrations of Earth's seismic activity, and the dancing bells of the aurora.

Now, thanks to a $104,000 grant from the Rasmuson Foundation, that vision will soon be expanded. The Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer had always planned to update the Place. In the past decade, technologies have improved, as has access to the scientific instruments that provide the raw data from Alaska's geophysical presence.

Adams plans to add new loudspeakers and flooring, plus a brand new feature, a "puff" anemometer that will measure wind and integrate its auditory interpretation into the composition's algorithm. The upgrades will begin this fall.

Read more about the project in this Fairbanks Daily News Miner story.

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PHOTO ABOVE:  Collecting water samples for DNA sequencing to determine aquatic species that were missed by traps during the survey. Photo by Kyndall Hildebrandt

OBSERVATIONS SEED SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY -- Every plant, animal, and insect provides clues about our changing environment. When it comes to Alaska, the land is vast and nearly impossible for scientists to cover on their own.

That’s why University of Alaska Museum of the North researchers are participating in a variety of projects that engage citizens in identifying the world around them. One example is a recent BioBlitz at the Gates of the Arctic National Park. These scavenger hunts for scientists – and citizen scientists – focus on a specific region. Participants spread out across the land and water, looking for all signs of life.

The museum’s genomic resources collection manager, Kyndall Hildebrandt, said watching people get involved was a highlight for her. “Getting them engaged in collecting and processing museum specimens and other biological material was rewarding,” she said. “We were also able to bring museum specimens back from Anaktuvuk Pass to add to the collections. Each specimen is unique, representing a place and time that can never be recreated.”

More than a dozen National Park Service and University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists travelled to the North Slope Borough community for this intensive inventory of the area’s plants and animals. It was the farthest north event of more than 80 BioBlitzes held across the country in celebration of the Park Service’s centennial.

The area is 110 miles above the Arctic Circle. It’s also famous for its caribou migrations and 8,000-year record of human settlement. With help from volunteers, NPS rangers and local organizations, the team focused not just on scientific documentation of the region, but also on learning, culture and fun. Groups of students joined scientists as they explored the tundra and mountains around the village to discover the life hidden in plain sight.

National Park Service Archaeologist Jeff Rasic said local kids who might be used to seeing bears and other megafauna were probably  most surprised by what they found when they stopped to listen and look – a bright red lady beetle, prickly sticklebacks, and slimy sculpins. And the scientists learned, too.

“Scientists were able to compare notes with each other far across their regular disciplinary bounds,” he said. “Every small mammal find for the mammalogists was also a sample of fleas for the entomologists. And everyone and everything was a site for collecting microbial samples—the fungi and bacteria that were the focus of one researcher.”

Students were also able to explore more fully the art of specimen collecting. In the community gym, there were microscopes so they could view pond water or anything else they found interesting. Petri dishes were provided to grow the bacteria found on their headphone ear buds. The community had free range to ask scientists questions and also participate in the collection.

Hildebrandt was there to trap small mammals. “We found very little since it was too early in the spring, but we caught two species of vole, the Northern red-backed vole (Myodes rutilus) and the tundra vole (Microtus oeconomus). I was hoping for some shrews but no such luck. I also tagged along with other crews to collect insects, pond water with hopefully trace DNA of wood frogs, and fish.”

More than 100 unique species from the Anaktuvuk Pass BioBlitz have been identified so far using a collaborative online tool called iNaturalist. Rasic said that number could more than triple in the next months as vials full of insects are uncorked and painstakingly identified and DNA sequencing of water samples captures the fish species that were missed by traps.

PHOTO ABOVE:  UA Museum of the North Herbarium botanists recently hosted a lichen workshop. Participants identified plants and used iNaturalist to contribute observations. Photo by Shawnee Gowan

Another project based at the UA Museum of the North takes advantage of the opportunity to connect people across the miles using online databases and crowdsourcing. Herbarium curator Steffi Ickert-Bond and her team have launched a citizen science initiative that aims to document Alaska’s plant kingdom. "Our goal is to encourage people to visit uncollected parts of the state and to resurvey areas that may have already been affected by climate change."

Ickert-Bond said there are many taxonomic mysteries remaining in the state. She pointed to the variations observed in certain plant groups, such as willows. “Adding many observations from throughout its distribution will allow us to further our understanding of this highly variable plant genus, which is plagued by frequent hybridization.”

Anyone may join the Herbarium project on iNaturalist, called Plants and Fungi of Alaska, and upload a plant observation. A location is required, along with photos of the specimen. Ickert-Bond said the project can inspire kids and adults to take ownership of their environment. “We are asking citizens to be scientists and to contribute to conservation in real ways. By engaging the public we can leverage data and advance science and conservation at the same time, while contributing to a more informed citizenry.”

Organizers plan to make the data available through the museum’s online database for researchers and the public alike. And the more we know, the better we’ll be able to tell the story of Alaska’s plants in the museum’s exhibits.

PHOTOS ABOVE:  Specimens observed and collected near Anaktuvuk Pass during a BioBlitz organized by the National Park Service in May to celebrate the agency’s centennial. Photos by Kyndall Hildebrandt

Hildebrandt said this kind of outreach is a core mission of the museum and one of the reasons she enjoys working here. “We aim to bridge the gap between research and the community. These events are an opportunity to introduce museum collections to a group of individuals that may not have ever had exposure to them.”

That connection is rewarding on many levels. A student from Anaktuvuk Pass recently stopped by the museum when he was passing through Fairbanks a few weeks after the BioBlitz to see the specimens collected in his community. “For me, that makes the whole event a win,” Hildebrandt said.

IF YOU GO

Visitors to the UA Museum of the North can discover the animals and plants of Alaska. Try an activity sheet from the lobby to practice observing objects and specimens on exhibit. In the summer, we are open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information about the museum’s programs and events, visit the website at www.uaf.edu/museum or call 907-474-7505.

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Meet your new (and old) neighbors! The lobby at the University of Alaska Museum of the North now features the skeletons of a newly discovered species of duck-billed dinosaur called Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis. They roamed the North Slope in herds 69 million years ago, living in darkness for months at a time.

The species was recently named by scientists, including the museum’s earth sciences curator Pat Druckenmiller and his student Hiro Mori, to honor the Iñupiaq people who live in that area today.  The name means “ancient grazer of the Colville River.” The dinosaur is unique to the Arctic and Alaska.

Druckenmiller said the mounts were created using specimens from the museum’s collection. “More than 6,000 bones of Ugrunaaluk have been collected, giving us an exceptionally complete idea of the anatomy of this animal.”

The three skeletons are each about nine feet long. That’s bigger than an adult caribou! But these were not fully grown dinosaurs. They were juveniles, like most of the duck-billed dinosaurs discovered at the Lipscom bone bed fossil site in northern Alaska. Druckenmiller said adult bones are relatively rare at that location. “But what we have found suggests that adults reached nearly 25 feet in length.“

PHOTOS ABOVE: The museum’s new dinosaur display features mounts built from plastic resin casts of real bones from the museum’s collection. The skeletons of the newly named species Ugrunaaluk kukpikensis are standing in front of a realistic painting of them by Anchorage artist James Havens.

UAF photos by JR Ancheta

The museum’s skeleton mounts are built from plastic resin casts of real bones housed in the museum’s collection, so they look completely real. The display features casts of the fossils and not the real bones, so the bones are not damaged and can be available for research and education.

The mounts are displayed in front of a large painting by Anchorage artist James Havens. Museum educator Gabrielle Vance said that pairing brings the fossil discoveries to life. “Many people are surprised to learn that dinosaurs once lived in Alaska. With the mountains and aurora, the mural places the hadrosaurs firmly in Alaska but also shows how different northern Alaska was when they roamed a polar forest teeming with life.”

Hadrosaurs, another name for duck-billed dinosaurs, ate only plants and had flattened jaws like the bill of a duck. They were large animals. The name means “bulky (or heavy) lizards.” They were one of the most common dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous Period, near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Vance said it is fun for kids to see a juvenile hadrosaur as it once looked. The mounts also help visitors understand the skeletons in their entirety. Fossils found by paleontologists are not usually so complete, intact or nicely articulated.

“We can see all the bones and how they fit together and start to imagine what they looked like when they were alive, how they moved and behaved and the tracks they left,” Vance said. “The mounts connect science and sculpture to remind people that Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis is the most completely known Arctic dinosaur in the world.”

Students in the Denali Borough School District created their own hadrosaur habitat, complete with ferns, horsetails, and metasequoia plants. Photos by Elisabeth Padilla

Vance recently traveled to the Denali Borough School District and introduced the new species to students there. She said the kids were excited by the discovery and the fact that we have dinosaurs in Alaska. Some students were intrigued by the lush forest habitat of the North Slope when Ugrunaaluk roamed the continent.

“They were interested in its size,” she said. “The hadrosaurs were not gargantuan, especially the juveniles like the ones found at the Liscomb bone bed. They were also interested in its potential herding behavior and the skin impressions we shared.”

Visitors can discover Alaska dinosaurs at the museum in the special exhibit “Expedition Alaska: Dinosaurs,” which will be on display through 2016. Also on display is a fossil map by Southeast Alaska artist Ray Troll. It shows a variety of fossils found across Alaska and the Yukon. Just like the hadrosaur skeletons, it combines art and science to great effect.

Vance also recommends checking out coprolites (fossilized feces) and learning about North Slope dinosaurs in the Gallery of Alaska.

If you are in the Denali area, check out the Murie Science and Learning Center to find out about dinosaur discoveries in the park. And if your travels bring you to Southeast, Vance said you should be on the lookout for thalattosaurs and other marine reptiles. “Always hunt for fossils, wherever you go! And remember, any time you see a bird, whether it's a crane or your family's chicken--it's really a dinosaur.”

TO TRY AT HOME

Ancient Animal Skins! Create scales for a hand-drawn hadrosaur. Try gluing paper clips, popsicle sticks, or buttons to pieces of cardboard or make patterns with the glue itself. Place a piece of paper or your cut-out hadrosaur on top of the texture plate, then rub with an unwrapped crayon. Now you have a dinosaur skin impression!

Dino Mount! Create your own fossil skeletal mount using rigid materials like toothpicks or popsicle sticks connected with wire, pipe cleaners or glue. To make it realistic, start with an incomplete and mixed-up set of "bones," then try to reconstruct a complete dinosaur skeleton.

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PHOTO ABOVE: A depiction of what the Hosselkus Limestone environment looked like during the Triassic. There is a thalattosaur and an ichthyosaur in the picture. Illustration by artist Ken Kirkland from the book Dinosaurs and Other Mesozoic Reptiles of California.

A RETURN TO HOSSELKUS -- University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student Eric Metz studies ancient marine reptiles. As he was looking around for a project to complete his Master’s Degree, he discovered a unique story that captured both his scientific interest and his imagination, a fossil site that hasn’t been explored in more than a hundred years. Now he is raising money on a scientific crowdfunding site called Experiment to fund an expedition this summer. We asked him about his project, Rediscovering the Lost Triassic Marine Reptile Fossils of Northern California.

How did you find out about this story? I'm studying thalattosaurs for my graduate degree and I went to the University of California Museum of Paleontology last May to look at the material from the Hosselkus Limestone, an outcrop formed during the Triassic between 237 million years and 201 million years ago. I learned the story of how the material was collected and I saw how well preserved it is. When I asked the curators of the museum if anyone had gone back, they said no.

That made me determined to find the location again. The fossils have been eroding out of the mountain for the last hundred years. No one has gone back because at the time they were discovered in 1898, the Shasta Mountain area was difficult to access. There were still grizzly bears in California. Since then other more easily accessible sites from the Triassic have been found. However, the quality of the fossils, their high abundance, and new access means now is a great time to go.

Why are ichthyosaurs and thalattosaurs interesting animals? Why study them? Ichthyosaurs are secondarily aquatic reptiles [which means they were land-based and adapted to live partly in the water]. They superficially look like dolphins and probably filled the same habitat that dolphins now occupy. They gave birth to live young, which is weird for a reptile, and grew to near blue whale sizes. Thalattosaurs are interesting because they are secondarily aquatic reptiles as well but are more semi-aquatic. You can think of them as reptile seals. Thalattosaurs are interesting because they have this down-turned snout (see photo above) that we still don't understand. Studying them allows us to have a better idea of the diversity of the planet and how groups of organisms go extinct and how they diversify.

PHOTO ABOVE: Hosselkus Limestone material fossils from the University of California Museum of Paleontology collection.

What are your plans? The research plans are to find more specimens of the ichthyosaurs and thalattosaurs from the Hosselkus limestone and to prepare the specimens and describe them. The plan is to find more complete specimens than there are currently. I would be able to do some of the acid preparation at the lab here at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

My immediately career plans are to do a PhD in paleontology and to become a curator of a vertebrate paleontology collection. In academia it is a publish or perish mentality, and also a who you know game. Being able to do collaborative work broadens my knowledge set and my contacts, and gives me the ability to publish the work.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit Eric’s fundraising website to learn more. https://experiment.com/projects/rediscovering-the-lost-triassic-marine-reptile-fossils-of-northern-california

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MEETING ALASKA’S INSECTS -- Now that the days are getting warmer in Interior Alaska, you might notice a tickling on your arm or something buzzing around your face. The insects are back! They are returning from their winter hideaways to spend the short summer season laying their eggs and preparing for the next generation.

Insects are the most common animals on the planet.  Of the 1.5 million known species of animals living on Earth, about a million are insects. Many species are still being named. Some think there may be as many as 10 million different insect species waiting to be discovered.

PHOTOS ABOVE:  White admiral butterflies photographed and collected by Kenelm Philip at Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest in Alaska. 

At the University of Alaska Museum of the North, our entomology collection helps researchers understand the insects of the North. More than 1,680,000 insect specimens are preserved in the museum’s collections. This information helps scientists determine how many insects and what kinds live in Alaska.

Kathryn Daly is a University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student working with butterflies and moths in the museum’s insect collection. “There are thousands of species of insect that call Alaska home and each one has a unique life history, food preference and type of habitat. When we become aware of the animals and plants around us, we begin to see the vast interconnectedness of our ecosystem.”

It can be fun to identify the insects in your own backyard. Sit and watch the insects as they interact with their habitat. Or get a net or jar to catch them to look at them closer. All insects have a body divided into three main sections, the head, thorax and abdomen. Insects have six legs when they are adults. Many insects have wings but not all.

PHOTO ABOVE: A visitor lets butterflies walk on her hands at a special event at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Photo by Jennifer Arseneau

One especially enticing insect at home in Alaska is the butterfly, There are 85 butterfly species in Alaska and 710 moth species. Some are very similar looking, but others are vibrant and easily recognizable because they are the only type of butterfly or moth in Alaska with that pattern of color on their wings.

A good example is the white admiral butterfly (Limenitis arthemis) which is mainly black with a big white stripe across its wings. No other species in Alaska has that pattern.

Some butterfly species are quite similar looking. All of the blue butterflies in Alaska belong to the family Lycaenidae. To determine the species, Daly said she would need to look for detailed patterns on the ventral part of the wing, the side that faces the ground when they fly.

In determining any type of insect, it is helpful to pay attention to color, shape and size. Some species are easy to identify because their wing patterns are unique, but others are notoriously difficult because they have mottled or subtle patterns on their wings that vary slightly from one species to the next.

Other resources include reference books, like the new field guide “Butterflies of Alaska” based on research by Kenelm Philip, who died in 2014. He spent decades studying the Lepidoptera – moths and butterflies – of Alaska and amassing one of the largest Arctic collections in the world.

Daly worked closely with Philip and wants to continue his legacy. “I want to build a community of people who are interested in compiling information about these animals. By sharing our current knowledge of the insect fauna of Alaska, we can better understand the work of Dr. Philip, who orchestrated the Alaska Lepidoptera Survey.“

She maintains a listserv, the Alaska Lepidoptera Club, where people can share butterfly and moth sightings as well as information about new publications and news on Philip’s Lepidoptera specimens.

Daly is now working to help care for his collection. That includes linking the specimens to digital records that are publicly viewable in the museum’s online database, ARCTOS. This semester, she trained 15 students to do this as a part of an undergraduate sampling design class project.

The students have measured and linked 2,356 specimens to records as of mid-April. There are over 111,000 specimens of butterflies and moths that Philip and the Alaska Lepidoptera Survey volunteers collected across Alaska, Canada and Russia. That means just over 2% have been linked to their digital records.

Daly and the students she trained are also measuring the wings of butterflies collected on the North Slope and on the Seward Peninsula. “In Greenland, butterfly wings are shrinking as the climate warms,  but we don’t know yet if Alaska butterflies have or will face that same consequence.”

Museums and online databases can be used to answer questions about our changing world. Daly encourages people to publicly document the species that are of interest to them. “Never be afraid to ask other people. Learning about insects is a lifelong quest filled with complexity and discovery.”

She also encourage people to share their photos to iNaturalist, an online community where experts will help identify species of animals and plants. That information is made available to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, where it is publicly accessible to any interested researcher. Butterflies can also be reported to eButterfly, which offers tools for people to keep track of the species they’ve seen and to explore information about those species.

TO TRY AT HOME

Start your own insect collection! Look for and identify insects in your own backyard. Are there beetles? Moths? Make a list of the types of insects and where they live in your yard. Turn over logs and look on trees to find them. UAF scientist Kathryn Daly suggests the guide “Insects of South-Central Alaska” by Dominique Collet as a good general resource to help get you started. The field guide “Butterflies of Alaska” by Kenelm Philip is another good source. They are both available in the Museum Store.

Metamorphosis Mobile! Make a model of the life cycle of a butterfly (or another insect like an ant or a ladybeetle). Decorate a paper plate. Cut a leaf shape out of construction paper and draw eggs on it. Cut a caterpillar shape out of construction paper, as well as a pupa (chrysalis) and a butterfly. Decorate the wings and draw on a body. Tape all the shapes to strings and tape the strings to one side of your decorated plate. Tape another string to the center top of the plate. Your mobile is ready to hang!

IF YOU GO

May is the last chance to experience weekly hands-on programs at the UA Museum of the North until the fall! This month, the theme is insects. Kids and families can explore a variety of programs and activities, including Early Explorers for children five and under which meets each Friday from 10 a.m.–noon. At Junior Curators on May 7, visitors can explore butterflies and dragonflies with scientist Kathryn Daly. Beneficial bugs is the topic at Junior Curators on May 14. Both take place from 2-4 p.m.

For more information about the museum’s programs and events, visit the website at www.uaf.edu/museum or call 907-474-7505.