Metamorphosis

Editor’s Comments METAMORPHOSIS Metamorphosis Activities • Research Merian at www.nmwa.org Nancy in the first grade. • Look for contemporary naturalists/artists online and compare their work etamorphosis has been to Merian’s. on my mind lately, both as a specific • Research species of but- scientific idea and a terflies native to your M region and depict their broader concept. One of our second Nancy in the adult stage. grade teachers recently asked me if I stages of metamorphosis could help her teach metamorphosis in a flip book. to her students and one thing led Amsterdam to write and illustrate a to another. My first thought was to book about what she had observed. research the work of Maria Sibylla Though her book inspired many Merian, an artist/naturalist whose subsequent scientists, her work was nounced in elementary students. I work I became aware of years ago on mostly forgotten during the nine- am privileged to be such a witness. a visit to the National Museum of teenth century until its reemergence In Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Women in the Arts in Washington, in contemporary times. In 1997, Merian and the Secrets of Meta- DC (NMWA). the U.S. Postal Service issued two morphosis, author Kim Todd says Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) botanical print stamps featuring that metamorphosis “is a process was one of the great female artists two illustrations by Merian selected integral to the way we perceive of the seventeenth century. Her from more than seventy of her ourselves and our ability to change work depicts a particular sensitiv- engravings in the collection of the our lives.” The articles this month ity toward the natural world and its NMWA. detail thoughtful transformations inhabitants. She was the first person My students share in Merian’s big and small for you and your stu- to record and illustrate the biologi- wonder at the transformations of dents. cal process of metamorphosis—the nature every time they observe a life cycle of a dramatically different butterfly emerging from a chrysalis Resources egg, larva, pupa, and adult found in in their classroom. In turn, I get to Todd, Kim. Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla many insects. see their own transformations. One Merian and the Secrets of Meta- In 1699, at age fifty-two, she of the benefits of teaching art in an morphosis. Harcourt, Inc., 2007. traveled with her daughter from elementary school for a number of Burris, Judy and Wayne Richards, Amsterdam to the rainforests years is the opportunity to see my The Life Cycles of Butterflies. of the Dutch colony of Surinam students change before my eyes as Storey Publishing, 2006. in South America, more than a they grow up. I have taught many of century before Charles Darwin’s my current fifth graders since they expeditions. Here she spent two were in kindergarten and have been years studying and recording meta- fortunate to witness their physical, morphosis in her insect subjects’ mental, and creative transforma- natural habitats. She returned to tions—rapid changes most pro- Nancy Walkup, Editor 4 SchoolArts May/June 2007.

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