Included here are notices of exhibits, lectures, conferences and other gatherings or events of Antarctic interest. Current and closest to the present usually listed first. Go to PAST EVENTS for those that have already happened.
Last updated: 28 April 2008.
Accessed at least
WONDROUS COLDWondrous Cold, an exhibition of Joan Myers; photographs, opens at the Springfield (MA) Museum of Fine Arts on 25 March 2008 running through 1 June 2008. This was developed as a Smithsonian traveling exhibition. This is what the Museum's website says:
"This exhibit features 50 dramatic color and black-and-white photographs of the world's most hostile continent. Award-winning photographer Joan Myers spent October 2002 through January 2003 photographing the scientific activities and daily life at McMurdo research station in Antarctica. Large panoramas of Antarctica's austere beauty are juxtaposed with wildlife, people, and the abandoned huts of early explorers Scott and Shackleton. Myers also explored the interior of the continent by plane, ship, helicopter and snowmobile, and took photos aboard a Coast Guard icebreaker, at the South Pole, and from the top of an active volcano. Her pictures offer a glimpse of the majestic continent that has captured the imagination of explorers, scientists and armchair travelers alike. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest and most remote continent on the Earth. No permanent human settlement has ever been established on Antarctica, but dozens of countries maintain research stations there to study its geological past, its glaciers and wildlife, and the environment. McMurdo Station is the largest of three American scientific research stations built in the 1950s. "I have seen part of the planet that few have seen, and I have had the time to walk and photograph and feel our world without its veneer of human activity. Antarctica cannot be tamed." That is the last journal entry Joan Myers wrote, summing up the four-month project." Source: http://www.springfieldmuseums.org/museums/mfa/exhibits/?page_function=view&exhibit_id=108(24 March 2008)
ISLANDS TO ICE—THE GREAT SOUTHERN OCEAN & ANTARCTICAAn exhibit at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, 40 Macquarie Street, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. 8 March 2006 to 1 March 2009
Museum hours: 10 - 5 daily. Free.
"Islands to Ice is the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's new exhibition exploring the definitions, perceptions, mythology and motivations of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. It explores the places, the people, the creatures and the phenomena that make the great southern wilderness a world of its own. It is an invitation to journey south from Hobart across wild sapphire oceans to the crystal desert of the Antarctic."
Website: www.tmag.tas.gov.au
Source: www.tmag.tas.gov.au/nowshowdetail.html"The lure of the Far South proved a popular attraction for locals and visitors to Tasmania during 2005-06, with over 120,000 visitors viewing Islands to Ice: the Great Southern Ocean and Antarctic, the largest and most interactive exhibition gallery ever produced at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, during its first four months of operation. Islands to Ice is the Museum's new permanent exhibition exploring the definitions, perceptions, mythology and motivations of Antarctica and the Southern ocean. It is the first exhibition gallery in Australia to look specifically at the Southern ocean, Sub-Antarctic and Antarctica. Islands to Ice offers a comprehensive look at this great southern expanse. It explains the geography of the Southern Islands and the Antarctic continent. It details the species that live in this harsh environment and presents the human endeavours that have lead to our understanding of the region. It also expands on the unique relationship Tasmania has with the South. The larger-than-life gallery includes a huge diorama showcasing the great plethora of animals that live in the Southern ocean, from Weddell seals and sleeper sharks to tiny phytoplankton. Islands to Ice provides the opportunity to get up close and personal with a Wandering Albatross, patagonian Toothfish and Emperor penguin; perhaps the only chance many of us will have to marvel at these magnificent species. Tales of great heroics are also told and the exhibition delves beyond the well known to the figures that left their own footnote to the region's history. Harrisson's sleeping bag and sledge from Mawson's expedition, Hatch's photographic plates; these important artefacts and others from 20th and 21st Century expeditions help explain the tales of many journeys South. Islands to Ice is an invitation to explore the stark and silent realm of the South. It's a chance to travel through the icy millennium looking at exploration and survival in an environment that takes people to extremes. Tasmania has a long association with Antarctica and the Southern ocean. This exhibition helps cement Hobart's reputation as a hub for the Antarctic." Source: Department of Tourism, Arts and the Environment ANNUAL REPORT 2005-06
JAMES CAIRD SOCIETY—MEMBERS' EVENING. Friday, 9 May 2008, Dulwich College, London. A talk by in the Great Hall by Paul Rose which will ask the question "Explorers and Field Scientists seem to keep going against impossible odds. How can they appear to be impervious to cold, heat, all pain and general discomfort?" This will be followed by dinner in the North Cloister and Lower Hall. Cost: £35, including wine. For information contact Pippa Hare, Fig Tree Cottage, High Street, Cranbrook, Kent TN17 3EN, UK.
(23 March 2008)
THE LAST SOUTH PURSUIT OF THE POLE. 20-24 May 2008, Drum Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth - Royal Parade, Plymouth, PL1 2TR, UK. Ticket Enquiries: 01752 267222 Web: www.theatreroyal.com/prod-productions_details.asp?pid=96 James Seabright Presents.
Adapted from the journals of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott by G.M Calhoun.
Two invincible explorers. One final conquest. "This new drama from a multiple Fringe First winning team charts the incredible journey of two of the world's most revered explorers. Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott were heroes from a time when the world had just one remaining corner to be conquered the South Pole.
Based on their actual expedition diaries, this show interweaves the two journeys into a thrilling story of adventure and extreme human endeavour, transporting us to an alien landscape as unimaginably hostile as it is awe-inspiring.
The journey ended in victory for just one team. But could the other cope with being the last south?""The use of the eloquent words of the explorers themselves gives this engaging production real gravitas."—Thanks to Paul Davies
METRO "There is much humour, but it is their accounts of the return journeys that are the most poignant."
EVENING STANDARD
(8 April 2008)
TWO GATHERINGS IN CELEBRATION OF R.F. SCOTT'S 140th BIRTHDAYBoth on Friday 6 June 2008:
A lunchtime talk on Captain Scott will be given by Dr. David Wilson at the Plymouth Museum. The title of his talk: "Captain Scott: a re-evaluation."
A formal dinner sponsored by the Devon and Cornwall Polar Buffs will be held at (tentatively) the HMS Drake
Sources: Polar Bytes, No 45 and Paul Davies.
(25 November 2007) UPDATE: "On 6 June 2008 Devon and Cornwall Polar Buffs are to celebrate the 140th anniversary of Captain Scott's birth in his home city of Plymouth.
The celebratory dinner is to be held at HMS Drake (TBC) at 7.30 for 8pm. Dress will be formal.
The cost of the dinner will be between £30-40 person (subject to availability of venue and the menu).
Anyone interested in attending can you please telephone or email Brigette Dixon tel 01579 384381. Email brigette@brigette5.wanadoo.co.uk
Numbers will be limited and tickets will be on sale in January 2008."
(29 December 2007) UPDATE: The gathering (limited to 70) is now set for the Royal Plymouth Corinthian Yacht Club (RPCYC) just off the Plymouth Hoe. (See www.royalcorinthian.co.uk). Four-course dinner with wine, etc. Price: £35 per person. Tickets available from Brigette Dixon, 1 Trefloyd Close, Kelly Bray, Cornwall PL17 8DP, UK. Tel 01579 384381. Email brigette@brigette5.wanadoo.co.uk. According to Paul Davies, some prominent Antarcticans are likely to be in attendance. Unclear whether the event is still formal, dress-wise.
(5 February 2008) UPDATE: Paul Davies reports that "about 60 of the 70 tickets have been sold or reserved."
(25 March 2008) UPDATE: The lunchtime talk on Friday, 6 June by David Wlson is at 1:10pm at Sherwell United Church, North Hill (just up the hill from the Museum which is presently undergoing refurbishment). The Museum's website (http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/homepage/creativityandculture/museums/museumpcmag/museumevents/museumlectures.htm) describes it thusly: "Join Dr David Wilson, great nephew of Dr Edward Wilson, who died with Captain Scott and his party on their return from the South Pole in 1912, as he re-evaluates Scott's explorations on the 140th anniversary of his birth." On the 10th of June at the same venue: "In a follow up talk about Captain Robert Falcon-Scott, Peter Marquis from the Antarctic Medical Unit talks about the legacies of this intrepid Plymouth-born explorer."
(27 March 2008)
FRIENDS OF SPRI–SUMMER LUNCHThe summer lunch of the Friends is scheduled for Saturday, 7 June 2008 at a location in or around Cambridge, UK.
Source: Polar Bytes, No 45.
(25 November 2007)
"IMAGINING ANTARCTICA"4-6 September 2008, Christchurch, New Zealand and Hobart, Tasmania in 2010.
"Gateway Antarctica and the English programme at the Univeristy of Canterbury, together with the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the University of Tasmania, will host a conference examining Antarctica from a cultural perspective. Drawing on the arts, social sciences and humanities, the conference will focus attention on the ways in which we perceive and represent the southernmost continent. This will be followed by a second conference in Hobart, Tasmania, in 2010." "Call for conference papers In September 2008 Gateway Antarctica and the English Programme at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, together with the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the University of Tasmania, will host a conference examining Antarctica from a cultural perspective. Drawing on the arts, social sciences and humanities, the conference will focus attention on the ways we perceive and represent the southernmost continent. This will be the first Humanities-based Antarctic studies conference and will be followed in 2010 by another at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Keynote speakers will include: Francis Spufford and Margaret Mahy. Papers of twenty minutes with 10 minute question times are invited. Topics might include:• Narrating AntarcticaFor information: www.engl.canterbury.ac.nz/extra/imagining_antarctica.shtml Email: mark.williams@canterbury.ac.nz Source: http://www.engl.canterbury.ac.nz/extra/imagining_antarctica.shtml
• Antarctica in literature, art and film
• Visualising Antarctica
• Rethinking the heroic era
• Antarctic masculinities
• Postcolonial Antarctica
• Antarctic spatiality
• Antarctic gothic
• Antarctic travel
• Antarctic disasters
• Domestic Antarctica
• Environmental Antarctica
• Antarctic archives and artifacts
• Human-animals relations in Antarctic
(11 March 2007)
8th ANNUAL SHACKLETON AUTUMN SCHOOLThis always interesting and enjoyable gathering is scheduled for 24-27 October 2008 at the Athy Heritage Centre-Museum in Athy, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
For further information: Tel: 059-8633075. E-mail: athyheritage@eircom.net —Thanks to Seamus Taaffe
(20 February 2008)
FRIENDS OF SPRI–AGMThe AGM of the Friends is scheduled for Saturday, 8 November 2008 at Scott Polar Research Institute, Lensfield Road, Cambridge, UK.
(25 November 2007)