The Birch Aquarium shines a spotlight on the remarkable women who have shaped the field of marine plankton research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Blending science, history, and art, Judit Hersko, presents her imaginative visual narrative series, “Pages from the Book of the Unknown Explorer.” Her performance transports viewers to the early days of Scripps through a cleverly imagined correspondence between Dr. Easter Cupp–Scripps’ first female Ph.D. graduate–and a mythical female explorer inspired by Hersko’s own Antarctic expeditions.
May 26, 1939
Dear Dr. Cup,
My name is Anna Schwartz. I was born in 1920 in Budapest, Hungary.
When I turned 12, I received a box camera for my birthday. My first photograph was published in a newspaper, and by age 15, I had developed an obsession with phenomena of light, shadow, and transparency. I’m also an avid naturalist, and I have always admired women scientists as well as adventurers, such as Maria Sybilla Merian, who was the first person to observe and document the metamorphosis of butterflies and who voyaged from Amsterdam to Surinam in 1699 to search for exotic caterpillars.
Another hero of mine is Jeanne Barret, who was the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe in 1776, disguised as a male valet and botanical assistant to Philibert Commerson, physician and royal naturalist on Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s voyage around the Earth. Incidentally, it was most likely Jeanne disguised as Jean, who, when in Brazil, discovered my favorite plant that was later named after Captain Bougainville…
The journey continues with Melissa Carter, who guides us through nearly 100 years of marine observations from the iconic Scripps Pier and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the cutting-edge tools and techniques used today.