Avenida Rio Branco: The Sound of Acre is a sound installation created by Zafos Xagoraris for The 27th Sao Paulo Biennial. This public installation is expanding the range of Acre, bringing sounds of this area of the Amazon region to the center of the largest city of Brazil.

Xagoraris's paintings and sound installations are based on his practice of recording and later broadcasting the silence of Cyprus's villages that were abandoned after the partition of the island between Turks and Greeks. His works represent absence and displacement through a poetic accumulation of images and concepts that span human history from the ancient to digital times. Xagoraris took part in the project Paradigmata, representing Greece in the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture, and in The 27th Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. He lives and works in Athens, Greece.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids uses paintings, life-size models, and cultural objects from around the world to shed light on the ways people have been inspired by nature to depict strange and wonderful creatures. From Pliny the Elder who, in 77 C.E., asserted that mermaids were “no fabulous tale,” to today’s sightings of Scotland’s famous yet unsubstantiated Loch Ness Monster.

Mythic Creatures features fossils of prehistoric animals and preserved specimens to investigate and illustrate how they could have—through imagination, speculation and even fear—inspired the development of some legendary creatures.  For instance, Scythian nomads of southeastern Europe may have mistaken dinosaur fossils for the remains of griffins and narwhal tusks from the North Sea likely offered credibility to the belief in the unicorn.

Throughout the exhibition, models of mythical creatures astound and delight. Come face-to-face with a 17-foot-long dragon with a wingspan of over 19 feet; a 10-foot-long unicorn; an 11-foot-long Roc with a wingspan of nearly 20 feet and huge talons sweeping overhead; and a kraken, whose 12-foot-long tentacles appear to rise out of the floor of the exhibition as if surfacing from the sea. The exhibition also includes two life-sized models of real creatures: an over-six-foot tall extinct primate called Gigantopithecus; and the largest bird ever to have lived, the over-nine-foot tall, extinct Aepyornis.

Other highlights include: a “Feejee mermaid,” similar to those made famous by P.T. Barnum, created by sewing the head and torso of a monkey to the tail of a fish; a 120-foot-long Chinese parade dragon, recently used in New York City’s Chinatown at a Lunar New Year performance; a Pegasus carousel sculpture; and an 18th century German apothecary sign featuring a unicorn, with an actual narwhal tusk as its horn. 

Biological evolution is the idea that populations experience small genetic changes from one generation to the next. Over time and through the process of natural selection, these small changes can add up to big changes overall, including the emergence of a new species

Evolving Planet takes visitors on an awe-inspiring journey through 4 billion years of life on Earth, from single-celled organisms to towering dinosaurs and our extended human family. Unique fossils, animated videos, hands-on interactive displays, and recreated sea- and landscapes help tell the compelling story of evolution—the single process that connects everything that’s ever lived on Earth.

The exhibition includes nearly 1,300 unique specimens—many shown here for the first time—and more than 150 interactive displays.

Born into slavery, George Washington Carver (1864 - 1943) became a trail-blazing scientist whose experiments with plants laid the groundwork for today's research on plant-based fuels, medicines, and everyday products.

Through more than a hundred artifacts, along with videos, hands-on interactives, and more, visitors will see Carver's curiosity and persistence take him from a remote frontier town to success as a teacher and researcher at the famed Tuskegee Institute.

Visitors can explore a life-size reproduction of the horse-drawn wagon - a moveable school - that Carver designed to bring his ideas to farmers in their fields and homemakers in their homes. It's stocked with the kinds of plants and products - from seeds and soil samples to sewing supplies, and simple farm equipment - that Carver used in his demonstrations