Museum of Fine Arts opens 'Stunning Photos of Antarctica'

Sunday, 09 March 2008 03:26

SPRINGFIELD, MA - Stunning photographs of Antarctica will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts from March 25 through June 1 in the Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey.   The 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.

Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey  was organized by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service and made possible through the generous support of Quark Expeditions.

The Museum of Fine Arts is located on the Quadrangle at 21 Edwards Street in downtown Springfield, MA.  Free parking is available in the Edwards Street parking lots. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.  Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and college students, $5 for children 3-17, and free for children under three and museum members. The fee provides admission to all four Springfield Museums and the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden.    

For information, call 413-263-6800 or visit www.springfieldmuseums.org .