The schedule for the 2017 meeting is now available on the conference website. It’s shaping up to be even better than anticipated, with 60 spoken presentations and posters, discussion panels and a wide variety of workshops.
Getting here early?
Join us for an informal pre-conference reception at the museum on the evening of Tuesday June 24th. Stay tuned for more details.
Highlights
- Launch of the new book The Future of Natural History Museums, edited by Eric Dorfman and contributed to by many members of ICOM NATHIST, as well as museum thinkers from around the globe. Thanks to the generosity of ICOM, every delegate will receive a free copy of the book as part of their registration pack. The launch will include a panel discussion by some of the authors, followed by a book signing.
- Keynote speakers Helmuth Trischler, Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich and Richard Pell, Director of the Center for Postnatural History in Pittsburgh. Both engaging speakers will address, each in their unique style, humanity’s complex interrelationship with nature.
- Stimulating panel discussions, including “Engaging the Public in Natural History Conservation” featuring Stephanie Arne Stephanie Arne the first female Wild Guide of the popular series Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom; Beka Economopoulos, Co-founder of “Not An Alternative,” a collective working at the intersection of art, activism and critical theory, including creating The Natural History Museum; Emily Graslie, science communicator and YouTube educator, currently starring in her own educational YouTube channel called The Brain Scoop and Lynn Johnson, photographer known for her contributions to National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and Life.
- “Aft
er Dark” Party Delegates will receive complementary tickets to the museum’s biggest annual event, our Haunted Museum. In honor of the our conference, the them of the party is “Year of the Monster”, focusing on beasts in legend and in nature. Join Pittsburgh’s hip crowd as you try spooky cocktails and check out the museum’s monstrous specimens and live animals. Go on adult trick-or-treating through the lavishly decorated historic halls of the museum. Costumes are, of course, encouraged. - Spectacular venue for dinner and poster session. The museum’s justifiably famous gilded-age concert hall foyer is the stunning setting for our conference dinner and the poster session (with coffee and dessert) that follows it.
- Conference trips to Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous house Fallingwater and Powdermill Nature Reserve, where the center’s important bird banding efforts will be in full swing.
This ICOM NATHIST conference, the first time being hosted in the United States, will give us an important, and timely, opportunity to think deeply about humanity’s relationship with nature through the lens of the natural history museum. Those who have been to previous conferences know the kinds of things that can grow from these events: the book Intangible Natural Heritage, the Code of Ethics for Natural History Museums, the Taipei Declaration, to name but a few. Add to this many friends who come together to socialize and share the year’s achievements, making it sure to be a wonderful conference.
Registration is open at this link. If you have any questions, please contact us. We look forward to seeing you there.