America's First Arctic Celebrity Explored in Apr. 13 Lecture

Story posted April 07, 2009

Advance.jpg
Hand-tinted lantern slide of Elisha Kent Kane's ship Advance. Image © Bowdoin College.

Author, historian, and curator Michael Robinson will speak on the topic of Elisha Kent Kane, who as an Arctic explorer became a popular and highly visible figure in pre-Civil War America, at 7 p.m. Monday, April 13, 2009, in Beam Classroom, Visual Arts Center, on the Bowdoin College campus.

In his talk, titled "Elisha Kent Kane: America's First Arctic Explorer and Celebrity," Robinson will examine how Kane's expeditions, despite their lack of success, fired up the American imagination and fueled the enterprise of Arctic exploration for decades to come.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Arctic exploration became a fad and fascination with Americans starting with Kane's explorations in the 1850s and lasting past Robert Peary's North Pole expedition of 1908-1909.

Elisha Kent Kane was an unlikely Arctic hero. He joined the First Grinnell expedition as an assistant surgeon in 1851, and set off north a second time in search of John Franklin's lost expedition in 1853. Trapped in ice, he led his party in an impressive escape from the Arctic, and returned to New York two years later as a celebrity.

Michael F. Robinson, assistant professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, is author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture. He has curated an exhibit of the same name, based on the book, currently on view at the Portland Museum of Art. The exhibit includes maps, books, and other graphics to tell the story of Arctic exploration in the nineteenth century. (Coldest Crucible is on view through June 21, 2009.)

This lecture concludes a series of events presented at Bowdoin in commemoration of Robert E. Peary's attainment of the North Pole in 1909. It is sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency; and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center.

The Arctic Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. The Museum is located on the first floor of Hubbard Hall on the Bowdoin College Campus.

For more information call 207-725-3416.

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