Election Section

Following a complex move from Golden Gate Park and a hiatus in public exhibit programs, the California Academy of Sciences has been back in action for some months in abbreviated quarters in downtown San Francisco. 

The 152-year-old institution temporarily occupies a converted building south of Market on Howard Street, just around the corner from the Moscone Center. It will be there until at least 2008 when construction of a new and permanent academy building is finished in Golden Gate Park.  

Although the temporary facility is a bland concrete box on the outside, the inside is a treasure chest of creative exhibits and activities. 

The academy has worked out the bugs from the move, so to speak, and is once again a prime place to visit and a good reason to make a rainy day trip or weekend excursion to San Francisco, especially since the temporary site is just two blocks from a BART station. 

Although many aspects of the old academy are not on display—there are no wildlife dioramas or big astronomy, anthropology, or geology displays as there were in the park, and no planetarium—this can be considered a strength at the temporary location, where the compact format allows everything to be seen within a morning or afternoon. 

The absence of exhibits in some fields doesn’t mean the academy has abandoned those disciplines. Upper, non-public, floors house the academy’s splendid array of research collections and working scientists. 

There are three main parts to the public face of the temporary academy, spread out over two floors. Let’s take them in order, from the entrance. 

First, and most entrancing in some respects, is the “Ants” exhibit, on display through May, when a new exhibit on Chocolate is planned. 

There are lots of great elements to the exhibit, including cases of wood munching carpenter ants from the Sierra and chambers of “honey-pot ants” in which individual adults, their distended abdomens adapted into living storage containers, hang like tiny, golden, champagne grapes.  

Most of the displays show both ants on the surface and ants underground and are provided with magnifying lenses for really “up close” examination. 

There’s a colony of familiar, household, Argentine ants, amusingly arranged with a stack of dirty dishware on which the tiny creatures opportunistically scavenge food scraps, a scene reminiscent of more than a few Berkeley student apartments.  

Hanging, sculpture-like, models augment the living ant displays and show the complex structure of chambers and passages of typical colonies if you could extract them intact from the ground. 

Further on, a really intriguing display explores remarkable symbiotic or predatory connections between ants, thorn trees, blind snakes, butterflies…and anteaters, of course. 

The exhibit show stopper is the leafcutter ant display, spread out over one wall.  

At the right end is a chamber swarming with creatures relentlessly defoliating tree branches in a scene that’s like a tiny diorama depicting Bush administration forest policy.  

To the left, a vertical panel contains nests where the ants “plant” the decaying leaf fragments and “farm” them to raise a fungus that is their food. 

Between the two chambers, a long cabinet contains an ascending, artificial “branch.” Up it, like an entomological Birnam Wood, marches an endless legion of large, amber-colored, ants carrying segments of leaves. 

Temporarily unburdened ants descend in the reverse direction from nest to the cutting yard for new loads of leaf (note that, in an unequal division of labor, some make the trip with tiny leaf fragments while others hoist huge burdens).  

The activity is at once frenetic, purposeful, and mesmerizing. 

Further along, legions of tropical Army Ants occupy two room-sized Plexiglas cases visible from all sides. Pillows are thoughtfully provided so children can sprawl on the floor and watch.  

This was supposed to be the star attraction of the exhibit but took a wrong turn months ago when beetles hitch-hiked in on the cricket food supply and gradually killed off the ants.  

The exhibit has now been revamped, sans beetles, and stocked with two new Army Ant colonies, freshly collected in Central America by academy staff wielding portable vacuums (there’s a video showing the collection work).  

The Army Ants swarm over a landscape of logs, soil, and plants. Mostly they patrol for food, but periodically they “bivouac” into large, seething, masses of tens of thousands of ants clinging leg to leg, with the queen sequestered at the center. 

A further part of the ant exhibit asks Bay Area visitors to collect and identify ants near their homes and send information to the academy to help compile an accurate Bay Area ant survey. 

Beyond the ants is the temporarily transplanted Steinhart Aquarium. 

Steinhart staff managed to bring together miscellaneous small and mid-sized aquariums and several huge, cylindrical, metal tanks—with large Plexiglass windows inserted—to put on display a good part of the collection that was visible in Golden Gate Park.  

Along with fish, the penguins and the coral reef from the old Steinhart successfully made the journey, the latter in a vertical tank viewable from three levels.  

There’s even an alcove for the ever popular “flashlight fish” plus a piranha tank, although there is no alligator “swamp”, open-ocean Fish Roundabout, or marine mammal display. 

Some of the tanks in the makeshift quarters are too high for children to easily see; others have suitably low viewing windows. A “touching pool” provides smaller children with the opportunity to examine various tidepool creatures up close. 

Many of the fish have been compactly grouped into creative displays such as a “Colossal Tropical Rivers” tank that houses truly heroically sized creatures from the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong.  

Upstairs, there’s an astrobiology display that profiles some of Earth’s harshest natural environments to examine what conditions—including those suitable for life—might be like on other planets and moons. We went quickly through this section, which didn’t quite come together from my perspective; your time, like ours, may be more enjoyably spent amongst the ants and fish. 

Much of the upper floor is given over to a large, staffed, child-friendly Naturalist Center, brimful of books, computers, microscopes, models, and natural artifacts from animal skins to fossils.  

A creatively arranged—and heavily used—play area for toddlers is off in another corner of the floor, and an adjacent classroom is lined with older wooden furniture, artifacts, and photos from the various eras of academy history.  

The whole facility seemed well adapted to younger children, while still retaining considerable interest for adults. The level floors, open display layout, and elevator access also seem amenable to wheelchair users. 

Back on the ground floor near the reception desk you’ll find an extensively stocked museum store and a restaurant promoting “a socially responsible food supply.” 

The menu—sandwiches, salads, hot and cold beverages and so forth—looked good and reasonably priced, but the seating capacity is minuscule, so don’t count on having a sit-down meal there during the busier hours. 

Also on the ground floor and ascending the staircase wall is an elaborate collage of photographs documenting the academy’s field research activities throughout its history. 

Three other aspects of the public areas are worth mentioning. The displays are decoratively minimalist, but creative. Academy designers did a lot with modest materials and a bare-bones budget and facility. 

A good example is the sculptural “Snake Alley,” with walls and ceiling composed of sinuous ribbons of bent plywood boards that filter light from above. 

Second, much of the exhibit care occurs out in the open.  

We weren’t there for the announced feeding of the Army Ants, but as we wandered the amphibian area a staff member appeared with a container of fruit flies which he expertly transferred into a tank of vividly blue and green poison dart frogs. As a cluster of children and adults gathered, entranced, he cheerily explained what he was doing and answered questions about the habits of the hungry frogs. 

Third, the exhibit texts pull no punches when connecting to world events. Aquarium displays, for example, explain just how, where, why the fish they showcase are now extinct or threatened in the wild by human actions.  

In the insect area, displays document how now-ubiquitous Argentine Ants—accidentally brought into North America around 1908—may have contributed to the extinction of the Bay Area’s Xerces Blue butterfly early in the 20th century, and currently endanger desert horned toads by displacing their native ant food supply.  

The academy can be a fairly quick visit—we were through in two hours—and I was pleasantly surprised to see what had been in accomplished in a building that is small and inhospitable compared to the institution’s grand, historic, quarters in Golden Gate Park. 

Steven Finacom wrote about the last days of the old Academy of Sciences facility in the Dec. 26, 2003 Daily Planet. 

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