November 1998 Calendar: The Memory Exhibition at the Exploratorium

November 1, Sunday
Special Memory Event: "Plays at an Exhibition"
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.
In collaboration with the Magic Theatre, the Exploratorium presents "Plays at an Exhibition," the first in a series of two weekend readings by noted and emerging local playwrights. To develop these plays, writers will go through the Exploratorium's current exhibition on Memory and create plays based on their experiences with the exhibition. A team of eight actors and two directors will rehearse and read the pieces during the first weekend. Audiences will have an opportunity to share their own personal observations about Memory and respond to the plays.

The participating playwrights are: Michelle Carter, Daniele Nathanson, Ellen Chang, June Lomena, Camille Roy, Mary Michael Wagner, Robert Barker, Kate Small, Cherylene Lee and Ricardo Bracho. The playwrights will revise the plays and present the revised versions on Saturday and Sunday, November 7 & 8.

November 4, Wednesday
Memory Lecture Series: Dr. Arthur Shimamura
Memory, Aging, and the Brain
McBean Theater, 7 p.m.

Professor of Psychology at U.C. Berkeley, Dr. Arthur Shimamura will discuss what we know about the effects of aging on human memory and its relation to Alzheimer's disease. He will also discuss how the brain stores and retrieves information, including techniques that may help improve memory.

This event will be webcast live! See the Memory Series Lecture page for more information.

Tickets: $10 for Members, $13 General Public

November 7&8, Saturday & Sunday
Special Memory Event: "Plays at an Exhibition"
McBean Theater, 2 pm
See Description from November 1

November 11, Wednesday
Memory Lecture Series: Dr. Alison Gopnik
"I Knew It When I Was a Little Tiny Baby": How Children's Memory Differs from Ours.
McBean Theater, 7 p.m.

Children's memory is not just worse or more limited than ours, but qualitatively different. Children are as good or better than grown-ups at remembering events, but have special difficulty remembering how, when, and why they learn new things. This has implications for a wide range of issues, including eyewitness testimony, consciousness, and an adult's ability to remember early childhood.

Alison Gopnik is Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and has published widely on young childrens' thinking, reasoning, and language. Her book Words, Thoughts, and Theories was published by MIT Press in 1997.

This event will be webcast live! See the Memory Series Lecture page for more information.

Tickets: $10 for Members, $13 General Public

November 14, Saturday
Memory Film Series
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.
Stink by Dan Snider (1981, 6 min, 16mm), uses the home movie genre to explore the inaccuracies of memory and our tendency to rewrite personal history.

Nobody's Business by Alan Berliner (1996, 60 min, 16mm), uses the filmmaker's reclusive father as the reluctant subject of this poignant and graceful study of family history and memory.

November 15 , Sunday
Memory Film Series
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.Sea Space by William Farley (1972, 8 min, 16mm), uses the South China Sea as the backdrop for an off-camera conversation between two friends about the past and haunting memories.

Birthplace by Pavel Lozinski (1992, 47 min, 16mm), follows Henryk Grynberg, a Polish Jew now living in the US, who returns to Poland to find out who murdered his father during World War II. In this complex and deeply moving film, unbelievable confrontations are documented, as villagers deny guilt and implicate one another. Digging through layers of memory and the Polish soil itself, Henryk's dramatic discovery becomes a revelation for the entire village.

November 18, Wednesday
Memory Lecture Series: Dr. Robert Sapolsky
Stress and Memory: Forget It
McBean Theater, 7 p.m.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky will present an overview of how stress can cause disease, with a particular focus on its disruptive effects on memory and brain aging. Dr. Sapolsky is a professor in the Department of Biological Science's Neuroscience, Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford University. He is a MacArthur Fellow and author of numerous articles and books including Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death, MIT Press, and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease and Coping, Scientific American/Freeman Press.

This event will be webcast live! See the Memory Series Lecture page for more information.

Tickets: $10 for Members, $13 General Public

November 21, Saturday
Memory Film Series
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.
When I Was 14: A Survivor Remembers by Marlene Booth and Jameson Goldner (1997, 58 minutes, video), chronicles the experiences of Gloria Hollander Lyon, a Jewish Czechoslovakian now living in America. When she was fourteen her family was sent to Auschwitz where she narrowly escaped the gas chamber. Liberated by the Swedish Red Cross, she recovered, immigrated to the United States, married, raised a family in the Bay Area, and lived a "normal" life. She was motivated, however, to speak out about her experiences, mainly in schools, after seeing a pamphlet that claimed the Holocaust never happened. This film recounts that traumatic period of 20th century history while interweaving Gloria's riveting life story and contemporary visits to the camps in which she was imprisoned.

November 22, Sunday
Memory Film Series
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.
Who's Going To Pay for These Donuts Anyway? by Janice Tanaka (1992, 58 minutes, video), chronicles the filmmaker's 50-year personal search for her father, whom she had not seen since age three. As a young man, her father opposed internment during World War II, and was arrested by the FBI. Diagnosed as a schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies, Tanaka finally finds her father in a half way house for the chronically mentally ill in Los Angeles.

November 28 & 29,
Family Memory Making
Near Exploratorium Cafe, noon-4 p.m.

Capture images and share your memories with photographer Corwin Hankins. Hankins has developed a three-phase workshop that will give you the tools to evoke memories from the past, record experiences at the museum, and share them for others to enjoy. Bring in slides and transform them into beautiful image transfers, or bring in objects or clothing of significance and make a portrait of yourself. You can also create instant memories by checking out a camera and photographing images of your visit.

Memory Film Series
McBean Theater, 2 p.m.
The Street by Dima El-Horr (1997, 22 minutes), is beautiful black and white film of a young boy and his bicycle on the streets of Beirut.

Lunada by Gustavo Vazquez (1995, 12 minutes), is a poetic journey that retells Vazquez's experiences growing up in Tijuana when his parents would take the family to the beach to picnic under the full moon, and explores how that tradition has continued here in the Bay Area.