The May 19, 2014 edition of The New Yorker ran an article about architect Jeanne Gang. Gang is best known for the Aqua Office Tower in Chicago, and is currently working on a redesign of the National Aquarium. The National Aquarium is located on Piers 3 and 4 in Baltimore, Maryland. That's where the dolphins get into the story.
Captive dolphins currently inhabit a "dolphin pavillion" at the National Aquarium. In connection with the redesign, there is now an active discussion about how to free the dolphins, eliminating the dolphin pavillion. The New Yorker article is well worth reading on that score, and to learn more about Jeanne Gang.
What I liked most about the article, however, was a very brief comment about how change occurs. Scott Corwon is the founder and chief executive of a consultant firm that has been assisting Gang in her work on the aquarium redesign. He and Gang are quoted in the article in an extended discussion about how our relationship to dolphins, and to other marine mammals, ought to change. In responding to a statement by Gang that "the public is slowly turning against confining cetaceans," Corwon said this:
It's changing slowly, it's changing slowly -- It's changed.
That is, in fact, how significant change occurs. I have often used the metaphor of the supersaturated solution as an example.
I do hope change is coming, quickly, to our relationship with the marine mammals that we currently hold captive in various locations around the world. Even more, I hope we will give credit to Corwon's insight, and keep working on the other changes we need to make.
Slowly,
Slowly
It's changed!
Image Credit:
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2013/07/21/india-bans-captive-dolphin-shows-says-dolphins-should-be-seen-as-non-human-persons/
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