Southern Exposure: The Race Begins in 26 Days
Monday, May 03 3:26 pm
The story has been likened to Indiana Jones with snow. Thrilling and action-packed, yes, but it was no film fantasy when two men — Roald Amundsen of Norway and Britain’s Robert Falcon Scott — set out in 1910 on a quest to plant their county’s flag on the last great geographical prize: the South Pole. Only one could be first. Only one would return home.
This high-stakes drama is played out in all its chilling detail in the Museum’s new exhibition Race to the End of the Earth, which opens May 29 and runs through January 2, 2011. The exhibition is curated by Ross D. E. MacPhee, a curator in the Museum’s Division of Vertebrate Zoology and author of Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole, which is being published this month by Sterling Innovation in conjunction with the exhibition.
Robert F. Scott photographed in his quarters during the British Antarctic Expedition. © AMNH Library
To heighten the experience of Race to the End of the Earth, each visitor, on entering the exhibition, will be offered a card featuring information about one of the members of either Amundsen’s or Scott’s team. Moving through the exhibition, visitors will find clues about their characters’ experiences, see actual items of clothing and tools they used, and look in on life-sized models of rooms in the respective base camps—all set against a spectacular backdrop of Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights, and field recordings of cracking ice, gusting snow, and howling winds. Compelling interactive exhibits will help visitors understand the challenges of exploration a century ago, along with paintings, astonishingly beautiful photographs reminiscent of images that captivated the public’s imagination in the Museum’s exhibition The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition a decade ago, and rare historical artifacts, including personal effects of Amundsen’s and a copy of one of Scott’s last letters home.
Children are sure to enjoy a diorama of emperor penguins as well as hands-on “scanimations” that lend the illusion of movement to illustrated ships, sled dogs, and more using optical technology akin to 19th-century zoetropes.
The exhibition will also feature examples of modern scientific initiatives. A projection of stunning images will show the rich underwater life surrounding Antarctica while an interactive computer map of Antarctica will allow visitors to visualize the ocean currents and punishing weather systems, watch an iceberg calve, and see what the continent looks like under its two-mile thick blanket of ice. Finally, a portable fiberglass “igloo,” sometimes called a “tomato,” and intimate portraits of contemporary scientists and support staff will convey the nature of research going on in Antarctica today.
Race to the End of the Earth is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France, and Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Generous support for Race to the End of the Earth has been provided by the Eileen P. Bernard Exhibition Fund.
Additional support has been provided by the Government of the United Kingdom and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ANT 0636639.
