Special Exhibits
Previous Special Exhibit: The Nearly Forgotten Storyboard Art Exhibition
Endangered: The Nearly Forgotten Storyboard Art Exhbition
The spectrUM Discovery Area and UM Broader Impacts Group, in collaboration with the 45 Annual International Wildlife Film Festival and Endangered: Short Tales for the Nearly Forgotten podcast, hosted an exhibition featuring student artwork and seven endangered species.
Endangered: Short Tales for the Nearly Forgotten is a podcast celebrating seven "nearly forgotten" endangered and critically endangered animals across the world.
This special exhibition was on display from April 22nd through May 7th, 2022.
For Artists
Middle school students across Montana were invited to participate in a virtual course to learn elements of storytelling, personal expression, and drawing techniques from professional storyboard artist, Vincent Lee.
To complete this project, students selected one of the seven short stories from the Endangered: Short Tales for the Nearly Forgotten podcast to bring the story to life in a sequence of five drawings, known as a storyboard.
Storyboard: a sequence of drawings, typically with some directions and dialogue, representing the shots planned for a film production.
- Listen to Endangered: Short Tales of the Nearly Forgotten. Select one of the stories to represent in your storyboard.
- Download the storyboard template.
Click on the links provided below to access the three lessons in Vincent Lee's Art of Storyboarding curriculum.
- Lesson 1 - Story (2:45 min)
- Lesson 2 - Cinematography (5:37 min)
- Lesson 3 - Composition & Drawing (5:31 min)
- Assignment Demonstration 1 (12:33 min)
- Assignment Demonstration 2 (19:38 min)
- Storyboard Template PDF
Gallery Opening Special Event
April 22nd, 2022 at 4:00 pm
spectrUM Discovery Area
Wildfest Performance
Noah Watts read "Black Footed Ferret" from Endangered: Short Tales for the Nearly Forgotten podcast.
April 23, 2022 at 12:30 pm
The IWFF Wildfest, at the Double XX's on Higgins Ave.
Curriculum
Short form digital content, taught by professional storyboard artist Vincent Lee, as well as a link to the narrative podcast will be distributed to middle school students across the state of Montana in early March. Students selected a story from the podcast to corresond with their storyboard artwork. The curriculum's focus is multi-faceted, covering the basic concepts of storyboarding, elements of narrative structure, an introduction to various endangered species as well as encouraging students' personal expression.
Artist Selection Process
Interested artists submitted their work to the International Wildlife Film Festival for review and a celebrity jury will select winners and award prizes. The selected pieces will be exhibited at spectrUM in association with the festival.
Our Guest Artists
Vincent Lee
A Los Angeles native, Vincent has grown up with a lifelong passion for visual art and storytelling. He is a freelance live-action storyboard artist whose clients include Rachel Bloom, Ripple Effect Studios (formerly DICE LA), NBC Universal, Gentlemna Scholar, Smuggler, Logan Media, and Ubisoft. Instagram: @brushpenroulette
Noah Watts
Noah Watts is a Native American actor and musician. He is a member of the Crow tribe and descendant of the Blackfeet Nation. Watts has started in many television shows and films including CSI: Miami, Sons of Anarchy, Skins, Skinwalkers, and The Last Beyond. He also provided voice and motion capture for the lead character in the video game Assassins Creed III. Instagram: @thenoahwatts
Endangered: Short Tales for the Nearly Forgotten is a seven episode podcast. Each episode spotlights a lesser known endangered species with the hopes of giving them "a little love" before it's too late.
Previous Exhibit: Life on the Edge
January 26 2022-April 16 2022
Discover new environments on Earth and in space!
Life on the Edge is a new exhibition exploring extreme environments on Earth and expanding awareness of the possibilities for life in our Solar System and beyond. In Life on the Edge, visitors will discover that life is hidden in plain sight by exploring a colorful microbial colony, learning about the importance of our missions to Mars, investigating rover tests in the Atacama Desert, and using spectroscopy to detect what light reveals in faraway places.
Exhibition highlights include:
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Understand how microbes contribute to nutrient cycling by using a movable video microscope to investigate a bacterial colony in a Winogradsky column and discover that the world is teeming with life that is often hidden in plain sight.
- Discovering Biosignatures: Code a rover and experience what it is like to plan a route for a rover across the Atacama Desert and scan the environment for signs of life like scientists did in preparation for the Perseverance mission.
- Light Reveals: Understand how scientists use the transit method to learn about exoplanets by setting a kinetic model of a solar system into motion and watching while a digital display shows dips of light as exoplanets pass in front of the light source.
- Adapted For Extremes: Explore realistic models of hydrothermal vent communities that include detailed replicas of black and white smoker vents, and discover the diversity of creatures living in the deep sea and how they survive.
Life on the Edge is produced by Sciencenter in partnership with SPIF, and is made possible by the generous support of NASA. The exhibition is toured by Sciencenter, Ithaca, NY.
Previous Exhibit: Sun, Earth, Universe
spectrUM has been awarded a copy of the Sun, Earth, Universe exhibition!
The Sun, Earth, Universe exhibition is on display at spectrUM as part of a nationwide effort designed to engage audiences in the awe-inspiring fields of Earth and space science.
Packed with engaging, hands-on interactive exhibits and dazzling imagery, this exhibition will connect visitors with current NASA science research and launch them on a journey to explore the universe! How is Earth changing? What is it like on other planets? Does life exist beyond Earth? What’s happening on the Sun, and how does it affect us? Sun, Earth, Universe is a new exhibition about our planet, the solar system, and the universe, and the big questions NASA is trying to answer about each.
Sun, Earth, Universe includes fun and compelling exhibits for visitors of all ages. Follow the design-build-test cycle of engineering and build a model spacecraft for your own mission to space. Spin a tumbler of 10,000 beads, representing all of the stars we can see from Earth to search for the unique one that represents our Sun. Reveal hidden images using the same tools NASA scientists employ to explore the otherwise invisible forces and energy of the universe. Take a break in the seating area and play the Your Mission to Space board game, or help younger visitors pilot rovers across the Mars landscape play table. These fun experiences (and many more!) introduce visitors to ongoing NASA research in the fields of heliophysics, Earth science, planetary science, and astrophysics, and encourage them to imagine what the future of Earth and space science might hold.
The Sun, Earth, Universe exhibition was created through a project led by Arizona State University, in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Sun, Earth, Universe exhibition was developed by a team led by the Science Museum of Minnesota, and fifty-two copies will be fabricated and distributed nationwide by the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Network). Exhibitions will be delivered between fall 2018 and summer 2019 and then will be on display at museums across the country over the next several years .
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Acknowledgement
The Sun, Earth, Universe exhibition was developed in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Sun, Earth, Universe exhibitions are developed and distributed nationwide by the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Network).
This material is based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC67A and 80NSSC18M0061. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
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NASA announcement
Please see the NASA August 12, 2018 “Want to Learn More About the Sun?” resources
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/want-to-learn-more-about-the-sun-here-s-how/
About the NISE Network
The National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Network) is a national community of informal educators and scientists dedicated to fostering public awareness, engagement, and understanding of current science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
http://nisenet.org/about
More about the exhibition