This Saturday, at 1 pm, model and journalist Gail O’Neill will moderate a Museum panel on the Power of Beauty, at Expressions of Beauty: Sights and Sounds, a two-day festival about beauty across cultures and time.

Fermentation specialist Sandor Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation, joins a group of experts at the Museum Wednesday, April 24, for what promises to be a lively talk and tasting devoted to making your own fermented foods. 

Opening tomorrow, the special exhibition Whales: Giants of the Deep is co-curated by John J. Flynn, Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals, Division of Paleontology, and Dean of the Richard Gilder Graduate School. We recently spoke with Dr. Flynn about the exhibition’s many highlights, his fieldwork in South America, and his sightings of whales in the wild.

Tama Matsuoka Wong did not set out to be a professional forager. But, slowly, as the then-corporate lawyer lived internationally, she developed an obsession for eating wild plants. Today, it’s her vocation as well. Wong will give a talk and tasting this Thursday, March 21, 2013, as part of the Museum’s monthly Adventures in the Global Kitchen series. We recently talked with her about her approach to eating from “nature’s garden.”

On March 14, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order setting aside Pelican Island, Florida, as the very first national wildlife refuge. Today, it remains an essential breeding ground for migratory waterfowl—and one of 561 wildlife refuges overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Daniel M. Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recently discussed what Pelican Island is like today.