Interactive Whale Exhibit Offers “Inside” Experience
by Laurie Schreiber
A mother and child contemplate an interactive exhibit of whale bones at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland. Laurie Schreiber Photo
PORTLAND – An interactive exhibit of whale bones is up at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art (MCA) on Congress Street in Portland, through April 7.
The exhibit is a collaboration between Dan DenDanto of Seal Cove and his crew at Whales and Nails, Allied Whale/College of the Atlantic, MCA, and the design and lighting firm Nordoluce, which is owned by DenDanto’s brother Frank.
“This exhibition, is designed to be an novel contemporary sculpture stimulating multiple senses to achieve an unprecedented, thought-provoking experience of cetacean anatomy in a conservation context which will be on display, free to the public, through the early spring,”
DenDanto said. The exhibit combines light, movement, and sound, for an “intimate” experience with these anatomic structures.
“The viewer will enter ‘the whale’ and be enticed to consider human impacts on marine habitats in a contemporary expression of the whales’ experience of humanity,” he said.
The bones were selected from the partial skeletons of a fin whale, minke whale, and pilot whale.
DenDanto is a whale expert with a specialty in a distinctive skill – the re-articulation of large cetacean skeletons. He is a research associate at Allied Whale, and director of its North Atlantic Fin Whale Catalogue. He has been affiliated with award-winning productions such as the BBC’s “Blue Planet” series, I-max’s Living Seas, and Maine Public Broadcasting programming. He is a forensic analyst of the University of Maine Molecular Forensic Laboratory for Wildlife utilizing DNA sciences to investigate criminal wildlife cases from across the northeast U.S.
Since 1993, DenDanto has also cleaned and re-articulated numerous skeletons for museums, science centers, and other professional commissions across the country.