The Red and Black

Issue date: 2/1/07 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: KELLY WEGEL Carlie Morgan, from Lyons, looks at photos in the "Magic Web" exhibition at the State Botanical Garden, which will be up until Feb. 25.

An escape to the tropical rainforests of Panama is only a few minutes away.

The photo exhibition at the State Botanical Garden "A Magic Web: The Tropical Forest of Barro Colorado Island," features 40 large-format color photos by tropical ecologist and nature photographer Christian Ziegler. It was organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and runs through Feb. 25.

"Basically we pay for this - it's like we're renting an exhibition," said Julie Villella, the art exhibit coordinator at the Botanical Garden.

Villella, who is also the Garden's museum shop manager, said the State Botanical Garden is an area yet to be visited by many University students.

She hopes that the students will "stop by at their leisure" and may be discover a new part of Athens.

"The garden itself is a wonderful place," she said.

The traveling exhibition, which began in Spartanburg, S.C., and next moves to Kansas, boasts free admission, along with Spanish and English text to accompany the photographs.

"(The bilingual text) is a really nice feature," Villella said.

Villella hopes that the exhibition will be an example to visitors of the Garden's vested interest in the tropical rainforests of Central America, specifically their affiliation with the Maquipucuna Foundation of Ecuador.

She said they have developed this relationship for many reasons, one being the many species of birds that migrate from Ecuador to Georgia each year.

"That's why we care about tropical forests - because it affects us, too," she said.

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