Since 2002, World Oceans Day events around the world have been promoted and coordinated through The Ocean Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free educational resources to grow engagement and action for our shared ocean. The events allow scientists, scholars, and artists to encourage individuals to think about what the ocean means to them and what it has to offer all of us with hopes of conserving it for present and the future generations.

The Museum of Arts and Sciences will offer special programming to help visitors discover the wealth of diverse and beautiful ocean creatures and habitats, how our daily actions affect them, and how we are all interconnected. A traveling exhibition exploring the biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico and the ecological issues it faces will be on display.  The traveling collection, titled “Drifting Cabinets,” blends art and science and includes biological specimens, art, illustrations, videos, scientific instruments, books, artifacts, and music from contributing artists including Chip Lord, Kristin Lucas, Kevin Mahoney, Sean Miller, Dan Stepp, Bethany Taylor, Leah Floyd and Cristina Molina along with scientists Suzanne Fredericq, Verity Mathis, Joseph Ryan, Lisa Anne Taylor, and Thomas A. Webber.

“This mobile collection functions as a contemporary cabinet of wonder exhibited in a series of vintage sea trunks, each addressing an aspect of regional biodiversity, featuring invertebrates, reptiles, mammals, and others,” according to its creator Florida-based artist Sean Miller. “Trunks are refurbished with custom lighting and retrofitted with inlaid wood recycled from regional architecture and trees lost in Hurricane Irma.\”

Sean Miller is the founder and director of JEMA (John Erikson Museum of Art) and was the subject of a retrospective at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in 2014. He is a Florida-based artist/curator and an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida with the School of Art and Art History. Sean Miller’s work has received international coverage in broadcast, TV, film and print including: The New York Times, CBS News, The Nation, Baltimore Sun, LA Weekly, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miami New Times, Irish Times, Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, ArtStar (episode “Six in the City”/Reality Television), Gallery HD, Dish Network (2008), Oddities (Season 2, episode “The Horaffe”) Science Channel, and the documentary film How to Start Your Own Country, directed by Jody Shapiro. More information about Sean Miller can be found on his website at http://www.seanmillerstudio.net/