The More You Look

Says Glaciologist and UAF professor, Martin Truffer, “Sometimes glaciers almost seem to have their own personalities. I never get tired of seeing them. Standing on or next to a glacier is a similar experience for me as looking at the stars, it makes me feel in awe and shows how insignificant and small us human beings are.”

UAMN has opened “Shaped by Ice,” a special exhibit on tidewater glaciers in Alaska and Greenland. The result of three years of work on the part of the science team, the exhibits team, and a long list of partners and contributors, this exhibit is about how  we think and talk about glaciers. How we live with glaciers, and how we study them to better understand their impacts on our future.

In this episode, from interviews recorded in Fairbanks Alaska and in Ilulissat, Greenland, we’ll hear from the researchers about the NSF funded science and exhibit. 

Lizz Ultee is an Associate Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Morgan State University. Jason Amundson is Professor of Geophysics at the University of Alaska Southeast, and Amy Jenson is PhD. Student in Geophysics, also at UAF.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

In 2011 the museum approached 5 local artists and invited them to participate in a special exhibition to showcase the processes of art making. The museum then spent a year interviewing and filming the artists in their studios and natural habitats. The exhibition presented their work, and an in-depth look into their artistic processes. Marika Guthie curated the show. Theresa Bakker conducted the interviews. The artists were photographer Adam Ottavi, painter Alfred Skondovich, print-maker Sara Tabbert, ceramicist Teresa Shannon, and woodcutter and mask-maker Glen Simpson. This episode of The More You Look looks back 15 years and pulls those interviews out of the vault.

The Art in the Making Exhibition folio is available here as a PDF.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

While we cannot in an episode listen to multiple full tours of UAMN’s Behind the Scenes, we can listen to parts of them and think about how different they are, and how special each one can be. Visitors on a tour of course ask questions, and while we won’t hear much of their voices, what the tour guides say is as guided by the visitors as it is personal knowledge and any script. We’ll hear parts of tours by Patrick Druckenmiller, Museum Director and Curator of Earth Sciences. Sarah Le, graduate student in Ornithology, Nicole Young, undergraduate in Fine Arts, and Claire Thelen, from Ichthiology.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

In 2025, the museum held its first open call for artists and community curated shows in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery. The jury selected 6 shows to be exhibited, and Ree Nancarrow’s Observations: Two Decades of Change, is the second in this series. The show opened at the museum on August 15th, 2026.

For this episode, I had occasion to speak with Ree not once but twice. The first was at the museum, where we were joined by friend and fellow artist, Margo Klass. The second was at Ree’s studio where she made tea and I made eyes at her library of fabrics. As she says here, “Most of the fabrics are made experimentally. And many times, you end up with a product that’s spectacular, but you don't yet know how to use it.”

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

This episode is about a three week visit to the museum. It’s about working towards a museum exhibit. It’s about working with one of our collections and looking at specimens to find more specimens. It’s about why this research is important to all of us. Our visitors were biologist and University of Washington Associate Professor Chelsea Wood, Research Technologist and Lab Manager, Katie Leslie, and graduate student, Diana Perales-Macedo.

And what exactly they came to UAMN to do, we’re going to get into – soon enough.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

Not long ago, we broadcast another episode with the museum’s Birds collection. There, Roger Topp spoke with five of the students about working with the collection, and he spoke with the Curator Kevin Winker and Collections Manager Jack Withrow about the dimensions of the collection. And during that conversation, when Roger asked them to pick their highlights from the collection, Jack challenged him to pick ten birds, by number, at random from the 60,000 specimens on hand, saying that they could tell a story about each and every one. We did that, and these are their stories.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

In 2025, the museum held its first open call for artists and community curated shows in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery. The jury selected 6 shows to be exhibited, and Kevin Carroll’s The Sick, is the first in the series, opening April 11th, 2026.

Kevin stopped by the museum in March to drop off the work for the show and to talk about the art, this project, and the parts of his life that led him to create 45 pieces from 45 stories of addiction in the Fairbanks community. As he wrote in the introduction to the show, “Each piece is a visual portrayal of one survey participant’s response – illustrating the impact of addiction and substance abuse on our fellow Alaskans, so that we may face this together.”

This exhibition and this discussion explores complex and sensitive themes surrounding many forms of addiction and substance abuse. Please use your discretion. This content could be triggering for some listeners.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

The UA Museum of the North now has a planetarium, and as planetarian Omega Smith said when she first came to the museum in the fall of 2025, “We can move the stars.”

In this episode we discuss the new facility with Omega Smith, Director of the new Walt and Marita Babula Planetarium, about coming on board, building partnerships, and designing programs. We speak with museum director, Pat Druckenmiller and Senior Director of Principle Gifts for the UA Foundation, Emily Drygas about fierce visions and big projects. We speak with the engineering team that have made the construction of the planetarium possible: Cameron Wohlford, Director of UAF’s Division of Design and Construction, Jakob Theurich, DDC Project Manager, and Paulette Hoffmann, DDC Senior Contracts Manager. We dream big, thank our partners, and enjoy the smell of the fresh paint.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

Welcome to the museum’s Birds Collection. In this episode Curator Kevin Winker and Collections manager Jack Withrow discuss the dimensions of the collection, and the way it grows. We talk about Super Pato and remember the stories that come with interacting with specimens. We stop by the Birds preparation lab, where museum graduate students Laney Cardenas, Estephan Fortela, Sarah Le, Morgan Lynn, and Nick Ramsey are busy at work on some very different birds.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.

The Native Art Center at UAF has been a cornerstone for the study and preservation of Alaska Native art since its establishment in 1965. Founded by Iñupiaq artist Ronald Senungetuk, the Center was created to bring together artists from rural communities, providing them with opportunities for studying new materials and techniques to incorporate into their work.

The exhibition Creative Continuum, 60 Years of the Native Art Center, celebrates artistic excellence, mentorship, and community at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Present director, Da-ka-xeen Mehner and five of the Center’s students, past and present, stopped by the museum in February of 2025 to discuss the exhibit, and the Center’s legacy in artwork and inspiration.

The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.