by Joshua Curtis
Daily Lobo
Dead fish and media arts share a home at the Center for Environmental Research Informatics and Art in a renovated building that used to be the bookstore.
The building houses art facilities and biological research labs.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony was Sunday.
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During the opening ceremony, Christopher Mead, dean of the College of Fine Arts, said science and art explain each other.
"Leonardo da Vinci claimed that what you see is what you know. Leonardo was speaking both as an artist and a scientist," he said. "He understood knowledge is as much a matter of art as it is of science."
Terry Yates, vice president for Research and Economic Development, said the building makes sense because the departments use similar technology to do their work.
The departments will also be able to share information with each other more easily than if they were in separate buildings, he said.
The renovation cost $10 million, said Roger Lujan, University architect.
"There was a wonderful partnership of federal money, University money and grants," he said.
The building brings the worlds of art and science together by combining the Museum of Southwestern Biology, Natural Heritage New Mexico, the United States Geological Survey, the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Project, the Arts Technology Center and the media arts department into one facility.
Lujan said it was hard to find efficient ways to combine the disciplines.
"They share a technology center," he said. "All the technology they use to document animal species is the same software (and) hardware they use to create fine art with."
The ceremony had food, wine and tours for visitors to see the collections and technology of the departments.
Yates gave a tour and explained the different areas.
He said the building is the most technologically advanced on campus.
It is receiving international attention for the world's largest frozen-tissue storage, which includes samples from wolves, frogs and snakes, he said.
Cheryl Parmenter, the collection manager, said she sent out 11,000 samples to other research projects last year.
The building houses a large fish and amphibian collection.
Alexandra Snyder, the collections manager of fish, said her job is to preserve the species brought into her.
"If you have done your job correctly these will be here for thousands of years," she said. "These are used by researchers all over the world because New Mexico has unique fishes."
Yates said the dry mammal collection dates back to the mid-1800s, and tissue samples date back to 1979.
Vera Norwood, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the history in the collections and the cutting-edge technology are important to society.
"It represents the best in what we see as new interdisciplinary research," she said. "While this museum contains history, it is very much connected with the living moment."
