There’s a swamp in the DI Gallery – scaled down to about five feet.
The gallery’s latest exhibit, “Draining the Swamp: An Environmental History of Wetlands on the Kent Campus,” features decades of maps and newspaper clippings that tell the story of the once heavily forested campus. The centerpiece is a scaled down 3D model of the campus’ geography, including drained and preserved wetlands.
Jennifer Mapes, an urban geographer and cartographer; Lauren Kinsman-Costello, a wetlands ecologist; and Seth Rainey, a master’s student in geography collaborated to bring to life the “university carved from the wilderness,” as said in a 1955 newspaper article featured in the exhibit.
A large focus of the exhibit is areas of campus where wetlands were destroyed for aesthetic reasons or expansion. Buildings such as White Hall now stand where important wetlands, such as 15,000-year-old bogs, once did.
“One of the things that [the exhibit] talks about is thinking about the loss of wetlands as an environmental impact,” Mapes said.
Wetlands play a crucial role in combating climate change, flood prevention and are home to 40% of the world’s species. Kinsman-Costello said the destruction of the environment that took place in the 20th century would never be allowed today and that she hopes the exhibit will invigorate students to protect and appreciate the wetlands that remain on campus.
“I think one of the really important takeaways from this project is that people viewing these exhibits have connections to these places by virtue of being on this campus,” she said, “and through those connections they can have a better sense of these national trends in how wetlands are viewed.”
The exhibit runs until Friday, April 21 in the DI Gallery.