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Science Gallery Melbourne
Blood Stories
... science...Obvious connections exist between blood and medicine, with science breaking down the mystery of blood and offering solutions to many of our greatest health challenges. As our knowledge of blood changes with new research and scientific discovery... exhibition for Science Gallery Melbourne, 2017. Interviewed and recorded by Alicia Sometimes.... museums and collections. Inspired by Science Gallery Melbourne’s inaugural exhibition Blood: Attract & Repel, these stories offer a diverse understanding of blood through objects, art, and innovative new research. ...As a powerful symbol of life and death, the alluring mystery of blood has fascinated scientists and artists for centuries.
From biological fluid to artistic medium, this four-part series of stories explore blood through a diversity of Victoria’s museums and collections. Inspired by Science Gallery Melbourne’s inaugural exhibition Blood: Attract & Repel, these stories offer a diverse understanding of blood through objects, art, and innovative new research.
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Jary Nemo and Lucinda Horrocks
Collections & Climate Change
... science...The study of animals falls into the branch of science called zoology, a sub discipline of biology, which is the study of all living things.... Gibson, PhD Candidate, Centre for Ecosystem Science and the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales. ...The world is changing. Change is a natural part of the Earth’s cycle and of the things that live on it, but what we are seeing now is both like and unlike the shifts we have seen before.
Anthropogenic change, meaning change created by humans, is having an impact on a global scale. In particular, human activity has altered the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the world’s climate to change.
Already in the state of Victoria we are seeing evidence of this change around us. In the natural world, coastal waters are warming and bringing tropical marine species to our bays. Desert animals are migrating to Victoria. Alpine winters are changing, potentially putting plants and animals at risk of starvation and pushing species closer to the margins. In the world of humans, island and coastal dwellers deal with the tangible and intangible impacts of loss as sea levels rise, bush dwellers live with an increased risk of life-threatening fires, farmers cope with the new normal of longer droughts, and we all face extreme weather events and the impacts of social and economic change.
This Collections and Climate Change digital story explores how Victoria’s scientific and cultural collections help us understand climate change. It focuses on three Victorian institutions - Museums Victoria, the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Parks Victoria. It looks at how the information gathered and maintained by a dedicated community of researchers, curators, scientists, specialists and volunteers can help us understand and prepare for a hotter, drier, more inundated world.
The story is made up of a short documentary film and twenty-one examples highlighting how botanical records, geological and biological specimens and living flora and fauna provide a crucial resource for scientists striving to map continuity, variability and change in the natural world. And it helps us rethink the significance of some of Victoria’s cultural collections in the face of a changing climate.
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Museums Victoria
Time Flies in Museum Collections: Ornithology in Victoria
... Science, and he was made a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society in London. Cotton began work on the birds of Victoria, illustrated with coloured plates based on his own drawings. Tragically, he would never see the book published. He died in 1849, aged...Natural science collections are vast treasure troves of biological data which inform current research and conservation. Alongside bird skins, nests, eggs and DNA samples sits a magnificent collection of rare books, illustrations and images which ...Natural science collections are vast treasure troves of biological data which inform current research and conservation.
Alongside bird skins, nests, eggs and DNA samples sits a magnificent collection of rare books, illustrations and images which charts the history of amateur and professional ornithology in Victoria.
Whilst the big names such as John Gould (1804–1881), are represented, the very local, independent bird observers such as John Cotton (1801-1849) and Archibald James Campbell (1853–1929) made some of the most enduring contributions.
The collections also document the bird observers themselves; their work in the field, building collections, their efforts to publish and the growth of their ornithological networks. Captured within records are changes in ornithological methods, particularly the way data is captured and published.
However the data itself remains as relevant today as it did when first recorded, 160 years of collecting gives us a long-term picture of birdlife in Victoria through space and time.
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Rohan Long
Victorians & Native Birds: An evolving relationship
... can map this change and trace the ways that Victorians have interacted with birds, from Indigenous spirituality to citizen science programs. ...The people of Victoria have had a constantly changing relationship with their native birdlife.
Ever-present and iconic, we’ve put Australian birds on official state heraldry and on tomato sauce bottles and biscuit packets. There has always been an immense fondness and respect for our unique birds. However, attitudes towards wildlife generally and birds specifically have undergone seismic paradigm shifts over the last few hundred years.
Looking at objects catalogued here on Victorian Collections, we can map this change and trace the ways that Victorians have interacted with birds, from Indigenous spirituality to citizen science programs.
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Isaac Douglas Hermann & Heather Arnold
Carlo Catani: An engineering star over Victoria
... and science. The senior of these five compatriots was Dr Ferdinando Gagliardi. Carlo Catani was appointed as a juror of the Italian Court along with Baracchi, Checchi and Dattari. It was a sign of confidence in the professional integrity of these men ...After more than forty-one years of public service that never ended with his retirement, through surveying and direct design, contracting, supervision, and collaborative approaches, perhaps more than any other single figure, Carlo Catani re-scaped not only parts of Melbourne, but extensive swathes of Victoria ‘from Portland to Mallacoota’, opening up swamplands to farming, bringing access to beauty spots, establishing new townships, and the roads to get us there.