Oh, when George Irving, the general curator retired, when George retired, that position became essentially a person to oversee the curators and the staff in the animal collection, it was no longer essentially a timekeeper position. It was a position that was in a sense required by the growth of… Read More
I would say that it added on to responsibilities, but it added on in a very good way, because it gave the opportunity to share one’s knowledge and share the experience and to translate it from what was there now to what could be there in the future. There’s no… Read More
How did that happen?… Read More
And how did your relationship change or did it, now, you’re a little more experienced, you’re not the new guy. I think over time, we all know that institutions change both in terms of their hierarchy and in terms of what their needs are. People retire, people move along. People… Read More
What kind of feeding elements do we need to build into it?… Read More
What kind of considerations are special for this group of animals, those sorts of things. And that was just the start of several, now to this day, probably a hundred million dollars worth of restorations, renovations that took place at Lincoln Park Zoo, and it fell to the curatorial staff. Read More
Did that take you away from your other daily responsibilities or was it just added up?… Read More
How warm does it need to be?… Read More
How much space does it need to be?… Read More
What kind of safety features are there?… Read More
What part did you as a curator have in that?… Read More
As part of the growth of the zoo, part of the growth of the zoo and part of the restoration of the zoo, it undertook several capital campaigns. All of the staff were involved in both public relations, as well as the design elements of those campaigns. Read More
And so additional responsibilities, including participating in planning meetings for facilities, providing direct things like how big does this area need to be?… Read More
And that lacking is they appear to be, at least to me, afraid to make decisions, afraid to make decisions in the sense of, oh I have to check, I have to see if we could do that. I can’t make that commitment. I can’t give you an answer to… Read More
Why don’t they have the street smarts?… Read More
They don’t have the street smarts because they don’t have the experience. They don’t have the experience because they’re unwilling to take a chance. They’re unwilling to take a chance because there are repercussions. They’re unwilling to take a chance because there’s this structure in place, which is an impediment… Read More
What happens when these animals die?… Read More
What can we learn from them?… Read More
And so it was kind of a one, two effort on our half, on our behalf to convince the director Les Fisher, that this is something that the zoo needed to do, and we were willing to do it. And as a consequence of that, she and I wrote a… Read More
To talk about the curatorial staff then, and the curatorial staff now, and degrees of freedom or the ability to shape one’s own future it’s the difference, it’s 180 degrees from where it was during the time that I was at Lincoln Park. I think our philosophy, what the curatorial… Read More