The giant LEGO honey bee suspended overhead in the foyer of the Grand Rapids Public Museum is a vivid example of the wondrous sculptures and dioramas created for display in the special exhibition starting in fall 2020. This video clip starts with the scale model of the hosting museum itself, adjacent to the (LEGO) Grand River, made from more than 4,000 pieces of the colorful plastic building materials. Then the camera turns to show the larger-than-life bee above.
Seeing both the miniature LEGO museum in its plexiglass case and the honey bee brings to mind several thoughts: the creative impulse to make such things, the faint whiff of irony that the honey bee representation is made from the petroleum product that modern life depends on but which also has led to habitat degradation and destruction that accelerates loss of bee populations, the nature of public engagement and awareness, including the role that museums play for sparking interest in the natural world and forming relationships between humans and all the other creatures sharing the planet. Not everyone coming to the museum will pay the separate admission to the LEGO exhibition, but for those who do browse the sculptures and dioramas, the intricacy of the models and creativeness of the makers will make an impression. But it is an open question with unclear answers to know whether new curiosity will arise, new respect will develop for non-human creatures and their habitats, and by extension an increase in awareness for the consequence of personal consumption assumptions and expectations will occur.
While the pandemic rages in Michigan the museum controls the number of visitors by online (or telephone) reservation of admission tickets and member passes accepted each day. In this video clip some of the visitors queued at the admission desk show their face masks. Perhaps this heightened microbe consciousness from the sustained health mandates from the Michigan health department will contribute slightly to greater public curiosity of the natural world, scientific tools and logic, and renewed respect for facts supported by data instead of 'gut feeling' or the hubris of bald claims made in loud, politically motivated performances that Donal J. Trump incarnates.
An album of G.R.P.M. photos and video clips can be seen at https://www.flickr.com/photos/anthroview/albums/72157717510759343
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