American Museum
of Natural History's Cuba exhibit breaks diplomatic ground
The famed American Museum of
Natural History opens an exhibition this fall that its scientists say breaks
new ground on multiple fronts.
Live reptiles, models of
species — some scary — from a misty primordial past, but all evidence of an end
to a deep, and decades-long geopolitical divide fostered by governments, not
scientists will be displayed.
In keeping with the newly
relaxed relations between the United States and Cuba, scientists from both
countries have broken through more than a half-century of restrictions in place
since the Cold War.
The project, its curators
say, will be one of the largest exhibitions of Cuban wildlife, cultural
artifacts and species ever assembled in this country. They will include the
re-creation of a short-winged, flightless 3-foot owl — a heavyweight
prehistoric thug — notorious for stomping its prey to death.
Chris Raxworthy, co-curator
of the upcoming bilingual exhibition to be titled “¡Cuba!” said the
collaboration is a major milestone for scientific diplomacy.
“We are definitely the first
in terms of natural history museums to do this,” Raxworthy said of an exhibit
that presents a view of the island through the broad lens of science.
The extinct giant owl, he
said, has nothing on the bee-sized hummingbird, the smallest hummingbird in the
world, a minuscule hovercraft that is alive and thriving today.
“People think they know Cuba, but when they
come into the exhibit there will be so much more about it they didn’t realize,”
said Ana Luz Porzecanski, director of the museum’s Center for Biodiversity and
Conservation.
Cooperative research between
the museum and Cuban scientists began six years before President Barack Obama
formally normalized relations in December with the island nation only 90 miles
from the United States.
“In 2009, the museum started
its first collaborative agreement with the natural history museum in Havana.
That involved working on jade deposits, and actually, a number of us went to
Cuba at that time while a number of Cuban scientists came to New York and
worked on our collections,” Raxworthy said.
Over the years, the Americans
continued meeting with their counterparts in Havana at the Museo Nacional de
Historia Natural de Cuba. Then, last month, the two institutions signed an
agreement to continue collaborating on research, exhibitions and education.
“We are very excited about
this because there are so many rich stories to be told about Cuba,” Raxworthy
said. “There are things about it that are still very surprising to us.”
For scientists whose
laboratories are the great outdoors — the rain forests, deserts, mountain
ranges and oceans of the world — open borders are vital.
Alan Turner, a professor of
anatomical sciences at Stony Brook University’s medical school, moonlights as a
paleontologist. His work hinged on discoveries in Liaoning province in
northeastern China. In 2014, Turner and his team found that the world’s
earliest birds glided but didn’t fly. Another moonlighting paleontologist from
the medical school’s anatomy department, David W. Krause, discovered that one
of life’s earliest rodents was a huge 20-pound creature larger than today’s house
cats. The discovery was made in Madagascar.
Porzecanski said because Cuba
is an island, it has species not seen elsewhere. That’s why it is important to
go there.
“Islands in general are not
as rich [in biodiversity] as large continental areas,” Porzecanski said,
comparing Cuba to the Amazonian rain forest. But she underscored that an
appreciable amount of its prehistoric fossil evidence has been surprisingly
preserved.
“Fossil remains don’t last
long on tropical islands, but Cuba has a lot of caves and these remains do
survive in cave deposition and that has allowed us remarkable insight into the
island’s paleobiology.”
The upcoming exhibition,
which opens Nov. 21, will feature lizards and snakes, including the knight
anole, a bright-green, lighting-fast reptile that is native to the island.
Experts are still working on taxidermied animals as well as models of a giant
venomous sloth and a Cuban leaping crocodile.
Despite its proximity to the
United States, Cuba seems a landscape lost in a time warp. It is noteworthy for
the 1950s cars its residents drive, products of the last decade U.S.
automobiles were shipped there.
Yet even as its street
traffic recalls a bygone era, its scientists across a wide swath of disciplines
have stayed in step with the rest of the world.
Cuba’s medical researchers
have developed cancer drugs and vaccines that are licensed in dozens of
countries, except the United States.
A genetically engineered
medication called Heberprot that effectively treats diabetic foot ulcers and
prevents amputation is considered a breakthrough drug but is not available
here.
Cuban medical researchers are
trying to reach detente with the United States in alliances on par with the
collaborative agreement signed by the museum’s researchers and their
counterparts in Havana.
The sharp divide between the
United States and Cuba began in the late 1950s and worsened by the early ’60s.
“The two countries developed
acrimonious relations after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in January
1959,” said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida
International University in Miami. “The United States broke off diplomatic
relations with Cuba in January 1961.”
Cuba aligned itself at that
time with the Soviet Union and its Eastern European bloc, he said.
“The detection of Soviet
nuclear missiles in Cuba led to the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962,
putting the world on the brink of a nuclear war. Because of that, the United
States and Cuba deepened their adversarial relations,” Duany said.
Duany, who holds a doctorate
in anthropology, said scientific endeavor suffers when researchers are barred
from freely exchanging ideas.
He was invited to attend a
briefing on the museum’s exhibit last fall and sees the collaboration as having
deeper meaning for the two countries.
“I feel it’s a significant
first step in a larger set of research and educational possibilities,” he said.
“There are many areas of potential collaboration between Cuban and U.S.
scientists.”
The American Association for
the Advancement of Science, the largest organization in this country
representing scientists across dozens of disciplines, encourages global
scientific collaborations through its Center for Science Diplomacy.
The center has long
encouraged scientific exchanges between the United States and Cuba as well as
other countries, such as Iran, whose governments are at odds with U.S.
policies.
“Collaboration is very, very
important and not just for scientists — the public benefits,” said Raxworthy, a
herpetologist — a biologist who specializes in the study of reptiles and
amphibians.
In Chicago, William Simpson,
who heads the geological and vertebrate fossil collections at the Field Museum,
said collaboration is the lifeblood of science.
“Working with scientists
around the world allows us to pool our resources and our knowledge in a way
that we become greater than the sum of our parts,” Simpson said.
“Plus, different areas around
the world are obviously home to different species, and by collaborating with
scientists in other countries, we’re able to learn about plants and animals
different from the ones that live near us.”
The Field Museum is also
interested in Cuba. Its researchers have compiled reams of data about the
island and its species.
“Cuba is hugely important because
of the number of endemics — species that occur nowhere else,” said Debby
Moskovits, the museum’s vice president of science education.
Raxworthy said even with an
exhibition as large as the one that opens in the fall, he and his colleagues
have only scratched the surface of the island nation’s biodiversity.
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/american-museum-of-natural-history-s-cuba-exhibit-breaks-diplomatic-ground-1.12140076
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