Ours/Theirs: Mountain Gorillas
The world’s only mountain gorillas--total population estimate is 880--live in two national parks in Central Africa. Our fascination with these great apes is the key to their protection: each year tens of thousands of international travelers, accompanied by rangers, porters, guides, and a military escort, trek into the forest to spend an hour with the gorillas.The income generated by ecotourism supports the park and benefits the home countries (Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.) Unfortunately, it also places the gorillas at greater risk of our diseases. Respiratory infections have long been a problem for this rare population of animals. Spelman studied this paradox intensively along with her Gorilla Doctor colleagues from 2006-2009 and published several papers, including one proving for the first time that human metapneumovirus, one of the causes of the common cold, resulted in fatal infections in two mountain gorillas. Her work calls for better preventive medicine, such as proper use of facemasks; improved health care for central Africans with respiratory illness; and, more research on disease transmission.Tyler, whose sculpture investigates the vulnerability and value of nature, was fascinated by Spelman’s research. In Ours/Theirs, she uses glass and light to reveal the potentially fatal impact of airborne human viruses on the critically endangered mountain gorillas.Together Spelman and Tyler help us understand the health of everything is connected, and recognize that the future of all wildlife depends on whether or not we take appropriate action.
Independent Curator and Artist
Natalie Tyler grew up in the small beach town of Encinitas, California. Knowing at a young age that she wanted to be an artist, she followed that dream and it led her to study sculpture in Bologna, Italy. In 2002, she received her MFA from the California College of the Arts, in San Francisco. After graduating she moved to New York City. Her sculpture has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally. While an artist-in-residence at Cornell University, Tyler was the recipient of the Cornell Council of the Arts Grant to co-curate with physicist Robert Lieberman, LUX Art, and Science Exhibition. Last summer she was a US Embassy–sponsored artist in Tallinn, Estonia, where she exhibited an interactive installation at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design. Currently Tyler lives and works in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.
Lecturer
Rhode Island School of Design
Lucy Spelman, PhD, is a board-certified specialist in zoological medicine. Animals have always been part of her life, and her experiences with them include taking care of giant pandas in China, mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and river otters in Guyana.
She has worked as a zoo veterinarian, zoo director, wildlife veterinarian, media consultant, writer, and as an educator. In addition to scientific articles, she is the author of the National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia and co-editor of a book of short stories The Rhino with Glue-on Shoes. Dr. Spelman currently practices in Rhode Island and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2015, she founded Creature Conserve, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing artists and scientists together to save the animal kingdom — which includes us — before it’s too late. She has degrees in biology from Brown University and veterinary medicine from the University of California, Davis.
