Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants
June 19, 2009 – 8:37 amThe Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has mounted a small new exhibit, Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants. Michele and her daughter and I took the morning off from Artomatic and checked out it yesterday.
Ants dominate the small-scale world. We may seldom notice them, but ants affect their ecosystems as much as humans do.
The exhibit is made up primarily of incredible action photos of ants. There’s a nice ant colony a plant specimen and an aluminum cast of an underground Harvester ant colony that was made in Florida.
Sadly, as the reviews have pointed out, the only mention of pathbreaking entomologist Edward O. Wilson’s world is an oil portrait and a case containing his microscope and a sculpture inspired by his work. I thought it was cool to see his microscope, but few other visitors seemed especially excited.
It’s a little bit of a challenge to find the exhibit, it’s upstairs, down a hallway, past the IMAX. We felt a bit like Spinal Tap wandering about the museum looking for it when we first arrived, (”Hello, butterflies!”). We also stopped to watch the bees at work over in the insect zoo.
Here’s the review of the show from the Washington Post. It’s worth a visit, but don’t wait too long - the show closes October 10th.