Museum Nights entertains with gallery lecture and Butterfly Rainforest

October 5, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla.— The University of Florida Student Government will host Museum Nights from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Harn Museum of Art and Florida Museum of Natural History in the UF Cultural Plaza.

Students with a Gator1 card will get free admission to the Butterfly Rainforest from 5 to 8 p.m., with the last admission at 7:30 p.m. Visitors at the Florida Museum of Natural History will also take a rare and exciting look at the life of dinosaurs through their eggs, nests and embryos in “Hatching the Past: The Great Dinosaur Egg Hunt.” This hands-on exhibit features an astounding collection of 100 authentic dinosaur eggs and nests collected from all over the globe is on display through Jan. 7, 2007.

Visitors at the Harn Museum of Art will view work by America’s modernist master with the opening of the Samuel P. Harn Memorial Exhibition -“Marsden Hartley: American Modern,” featuring 37 paintings, 16 works on paper, a portrait by Alfred Stieglitz and two sculptural busts of Hartley. The retrospective exhibition, on display at the museum until Dec. 31, 2006, reveals Hartley’s shifting practice and beliefs in the context of the changing cultural and political realities of the time. October also signals the closing of the inaugural exhibition in the Cofrin Pavilion, “American Matrix: Contemporary Artists from the Harn Museum Collection Part II,” featuring artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Alexander Calder. It closes Oct. 29.

A lecture at 6 p.m. by Donna Cassidy, one of the country’s leading Hartley scholars, will delve deeper into the life and cultural influences surrounding Hartley. “Marsden Hartley, Transatlantic Modernism, and Religion: From Provence to Maine,” will examine the intersection of region and the cosmopolitan in Hartley’s art of the 1920s in France and of the 1930s in Maine.

Students attending Museum Nights on Oct. 12 will also experience the Amazing Art Race presented by the Harn MUSEs (Museum University Student Educators). The race is an exciting way to meet new people and work together to follow artistic directions, decipher clues and race your way through the museum’s various galleries. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m. and the race starts at 7 p.m.
Funded by UF Student Government, Museum Nights strives to increase student and community visitation at the UF Cultural Plaza, located near the intersection of 34th Street and Hull Road. It serves as an entertainment alternative for Thursday nights in Gainesville and offers individuals who are too busy during the day the opportunity to visit the museums during the evening. For more information and a complete schedule, visit www.sg.ufl.edu/SpecialEvents/MuseumNights.