Discover our Virtual Exhibitions

Chile es una tierra dibujada al ritmo de la propia naturaleza. Es un laboratorio natural que nos invita a mirar hacia arriba, al macrocosmos, y hacia abajo, al microcosmos. En ambos extremos de este largo y angosto país, las actividades científicas tienen un gran impacto global. Actualmente, más del 50 % de las observaciones astronómicas del mundo utilizan los telescopios del Observatorio Europeo Austral (ESO por su acrónimo en inglés) y de otras instituciones instaladas en el Desierto de Atacama, en el norte de Chile. Complementariamente, en su extremo sur, Chile estableció el Centro Internacional Cabo de Hornos para Estudios de Cambio Global y Conservación Biocultural (CHIC) para investigar los microcosmos, desde el organismo más grande, el planeta Tierra, hasta los más pequeños. El CHIC explora diversas formas de conocimiento y valores para comprender y proteger la biosfera en el contexto del cambio socio ambiental global. Esta exposición virtual potencia la integración de las ciencias, las artes y las humanidades mediante una novedosa asociación con el Centro Rachel Carson para el Medio Ambiente y la Sociedad, invitando a los visitantes a dejarse encantar a través de las múltiples escalas del cosmos.

What can the humanities reveal about people's interconnections with the ocean, past and present? In 1975, the maritime historian Benjamin Labaree offered an influential argument that the Atlantic acted simultaneously as bridge and moat for European settlers of North America. The paradox of these overlapping functions provided a touchstone for understanding the maritime realm, but it is time to recognize the ocean as more than the flat surface implied by it. Two further pairings, repository–mirror and destination–home, testify to the duration of the human connections with the sea, including its depths, and also to the distinct ocean relationships forged by different cultures. The blue humanities provide a mooring for considering not only the ocean's past and present but its future as well.

In this virtual exhibition, historian Donald Worster explains how human relations with other animals, wild and domestic, are at the core of a majority of epidemics. In the face of the current coronavirus crisis, he argues that an exclusive focus on human life and economy will keep neither the planet nor ourselves healthy. We must decide "whether we humans can or want to restore and protect the health, not just of ourselves, but also of the planet."

Vegetarianism as an alternative nutritional model is a controversial topic. Many contemporary arguments for and against a vegetarian way of life can be traced back to early discussions about vegetarianism in nineteenth-century media. This virtual exhibition sheds light on the first decades of the debate on meatless nutrition in German-speaking regions. In doing so, the exhibition adopts a special perspective: by examining vegetarianism as it is represented in caricatures, it is able to reconstruct the verbal and visual arguments used both in favor of as well as against the movement. The exhibition reflects upon the ambivalent public perception of vegetarianism at the time and, additionally, provides an amusing window into the wit and humor of the period.

In dieser virtuellen Ausstellung werden kurze Auszüge deutschsprachiger Literatur vorgestellt, die die Verstrickung von Mensch und Natur adressieren. Ziel der Ausstellung ist es, zu zeigen, inwiefern Literatur einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Verständnis und Problematisieren der Beziehung zwischen Mensch und nicht-menschlicher Natur leisten kann. Welche Aspekte dieser Beziehung werden angesprochen, zu welchem Zeitpunkt in der Literaturgeschichte und wie werden diese lyrisch gestaltet? Diese virtuelle Austellung ist hier in englischer Sprache zu finden.

Everything is waste. Irrespective of their value, all materials and living things eventually become obsolete. At the same time, waste is life. Formerly discarded objects come to second life through reuse or recycling. Waste is one of the most complex, contested, and charged objects we humans deal with in our daily lives. The objects, texts, videos, and podcasts in this collection display the life of waste in six chapters. Historian Simone M. Müller shows how humans produce, move, and conceive of waste. Get to know the power of waste, and learn about the different mechanisms that we have found to cope with the trash in our lives.

This exhibition tells the story of the Northwest Passage from the pursuit of a myth to the exploitation of natural resources. Historian Elena Baldassarri takes readers on a multimedia tour of the Arctic, featuring interactive maps, photographs, videos, and interviews with experts, scholars, and elders of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

“Doom and gloom” has become the de facto cultural construct not only for environmental communication but for the environmental science it seeks to communicate. We are interested in engaging in deep conversation about what it means to shift beyond “doom and gloom,” and to create movement toward more hopeful, solutions-oriented environmental narratives.

Esta exposición explora el rol del agua en la lucha de Bogotá, capital de Colombia, por convertirse en una ciudad moderna. Para Bogotá, cumplir con los estándares de los higienistas y la élite gobernante fue una tarea de control social, tecnológico y ambiental. Esta exposición examina experiencias cotidianas del agua como el lavado de la ropa o la limpieza del cuerpo, al mismo tiempo que estudia intervenciones de infraestructura urbana que incluyeron la domesticación de los ríos para el abastecimiento de agua potable y la evacuación de aguas residuales.

This virtual exhibition curated by literary scholar Hsuan Hsu examines the environmental impact of US military activities worldwide and how activists have used art and other forms of representational media to convey the harmful effects of militarization on the local population and landscape.