ART BREAK: Looking at Fossils with Paleobotanist Lisa Boucher

Join us in the VAC galleries for an insightful 30-minute discussion on how natural elements like fossils have been used in art. Director and Curator of the Non-vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory Lisa Boucher will zoom in on the ammonite specimen at the heart of Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro’s installation currently on view in Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil.  

 
ART BREAKS are short, interdisciplinary talks that provide opportunities for visitors to experience the VAC galleries through the unique perspectives of faculty and staff from across UT’s campus as well as the larger Austin community. Each ART BREAK invites a new faculty member or local expert in a particular field to engage with a VAC exhibition and share connections between their research and the works on view.

Lisa Boucher is Director and Curator of the Non-vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the Jackson School Museum of Earth History. She is a paleobotanist with a doctorate in plant biology and has taught several college courses including evolutionary biology, paleobotany, paleoecology, and biogeography. Lisa has been a Research Fellow and Lecturer while at University of Texas-Austin and was previously an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She started working in the non-vertebrate paleontology collections in 2017 as a curatorial assistant and lab manager. Her interests in museum collections range from applying novel approaches to data digitization and analysis to improving access and fostering research and education at all levels. Lisa has a strong research background with extensive field experience at several sites in North America, Madagascar, and Antarctica. Her current research focuses on Cretaceous macrofloras using fossil leaves and wood to reconstruct past landscapes. She is interested in how plant distributions and responses to environmental changes influenced the direction of plant evolution resulting in the floras we see today.