After showings in London, New York, Chicago, and Dublin, the Crochet Coral Reef project has arrived at  the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. By inviting participation from all over the country, the exhibition highlights the IFF’s groundbreaking work at the forefront of public science engagement.

Here, a Smithsonian Community Reef includes crochet contributions from almost a thousand people in every US state, and many nations beyond – a world-first for citizen representation at a major science museum. The names of all 900+ contributors are printed on a panel in the gallery, thereby granting the makers formal status within this prestigious institution and elevating the public from mere spectators to generators of exhibition displays. One of the goals of the Crochet Reef project is indeed to propose that ordinary people can be engaged in a form of “vernacular science” and that hand-making processes can constitute materialized “knowledge production” – in this case by emulating the mathematical forms of living reef organisms.

Constructed in the shape of a huge coral island more than ten feet high, the vast wooly edifice of the Smithsonian Community Reef was inspired by a diorama of an ancient coral reef in the permanent display of the museum’s Sant Ocean Hall.

Highlights of the exhibition also include newly-curated versions of the IFF’s Bleached Reef and Ladies Silurian Reef, along with a spectacular installation of our Toxic Reef – created entirely from crocheted plastic bags and other plastic detritus. Plus a brand new Green Reef. Also on display is a selection of individual works from our most skilled Core Reef Contributors, plus two large pods from the Latvian Reef, and Dr Axt’s ever-popular hanging-masterpiece Reefer Madness.

The Smithsonian Community Reef was organized for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History by Jennifer Lindsay.

The Crochet Coral Reef project has been supported by grants from the Annenberg Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Norton Family Foundation.