Events

The Harvard Forest Fisher Museum hosts an event to explore species loss and encourage community action. A panel discussion and Q&A by experts on invasive species and human decision-making will augment guided tours of Hemlock Hospice, a field-based sculpture installation created by Harvard Forest Fellow David Buckley Borden. A short documentary film will also premiere.

Hemlock Hospice is an art-science collaboration between David Buckley Borden, 2016-2017 artist and designer-in-residence at the Harvard Forest, and Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison. It features innovative art installed in the Fisher Museum and along a new interpretative walking trail, focused on eastern hemlock, a foundation tree in eastern forests that is slowly vanishing from North America as it is weakened and killed by a small insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid.

Hemlock Hospice blends science, art, and design in respecting hemlock and its ecological role as a foundation forest species; promoting an understanding of the adelgid; and encouraging empathetic conversations among all the sustainers of and caregivers for our forests—ecologists and artists, foresters and journalists, naturalists and citizens—while fostering social cohesion around ecological issues.

Hemlock Hospice is more than an art-science collaboration; it is also an educational initiative. Associated public workshops and print and social media are available to promote reflection, critical thinking, and creativity among scientists, artists, educators, humanists, and the general public. A diverse group of media partners will bring the concepts to a broad range of people in and outside the arts and sciences