Read an interview with Mark Dion in today's The New York Times. Dion, along with historian Katherine McLeod, and archivist Madeleine Thompson, is curating "Exploratory Works: Drawings from the Department of Tropical Research Field Expeditions", which opens at The Drawing Center in April and highlights an archive of images that illustrate the formation of our modern definition of nature. William Beebe (1877–1962) was one of America's greatest popularizers of ecological thinking and biological science. Excerpt: “When did you begin to collect avidly? As a child, it was very undisciplined. I come from a blue­collar background in New Bedford, Mass., and I grew up in a household without books, but I was always collecting seaside things. Now I’m pretty rigorous about collecting. Every weekend, I’m at the flea market. Pretty much every day, I stop into thrift shops and antique stores and Goodwills. It’s a long battle to acquire the materials that have the right kind of patina.” #MarkDion #col...