Public Aquariums and Marine Aesthetics

1.1. Public aquariums and marine appreciation

In the twenty-first century most public aquariums are not-for-profit marine science centers focused on education and conservation. Like zoos, natural history museums, and botanical gardens, they are collection-based institutions for informal learning. Historically these institutions have been places for both scientific practice and public education.[2] Aquariums not only teach visitors about marine science and conservation, they also allow them to experience the beauty and mystery of the underwater world through public display of their live collections. No longer filled with walls of tanks arranged taxonomically, today"s immersion-style exhibits transport visitors to humid rainforests, sun-dappled reefs, and through deep ocean twilight. Display tanks are contained units arranged in exhibits that feature numerous tanks and focus on specific marine regions or environmental issues. Designers harness the beauty of marine ecosystems in displays crafted to inspire visitors to learn and care about the oceans. Exhibits use pictures, texts, and interactive elements not only to interpret the display tanks and educate visitors, but also to pique our interest and generate empathy and wonder.[3] Visiting aquariums is meant to be aesthetically rewarding, even as it is educational.

For many of us, aquariums are our first, and sometimes only, glimpse at the world below the ocean surface. By most accounts, public aquariums are treated as places to see, learn about, and appreciate the marine environment. The question aestheticians should ask is, "Are they?"

1.2. Aquarium appreciation: the dilemma

As I sketched above, aquariums purport to offer aesthetic appreciation of the otherwise inaccessible aquatic world. Viewing practices treat the aquarium as places where we can appreciate the flora, fauna, and seascapes that make up the marine environment. If aquariums do what they are constructed to do, then the following claim is true:

However, even with a great deal of self-deception, we are never tricked into thinking that aquariums are natural environments. We are aware of the tanks, and that we and the fish, invertebrates, and mammals exist in different environments. Immersion is not meant to inspire delusion. Aquarium displays are human artifacts designed to house living creatures and to elicit certain responses from visitors. Assuming a basic distinction between nature and artifacts, the following claim is also true:

While we might applaud the aesthetic merits of the architecture of the aquarium, such as the quality of the displays, the lighting, decoration, and other features of the aquarium as a constructed environment, the central focus is the contents of the tanks that are designed to be beautiful and inspiring.

If what we see at the aquarium is appreciated as if it were nature and yet is not nature, then we need to explain what makes it acceptable in this case to appreciate something X as if it were Y. That we treat aquariums as places to appreciate nature and know that they contain artifacts is at odds with the dominant view in aesthetics that artifacts and nature are appreciated differently. Environmental aesthetics came about in response to differences between nature and art and artifacts that affect how they should be appreciated.[4] While there are many live debates about what (if any) the aesthetic differences are, there are reasons to maintain two distinct approaches.[5]

Since most of our aesthetic theories and ‘models of appreciation’ have developed in accounts of art and other artifacts, many rely on features of artifacts that are not shared by naturall objects.[6] These include intentionality, genres and media, artistic expression, and traditions of critical discourse. Partially in response to the exclusion of nature from aesthetic theories, environmental aesthetics has also developed around differences between nature and art that are taken to impact how and why it should be appreciated.[7] Nature surrounds us and we engage it with all of our senses; it is not ‘framed’ into clearly bounded objects of appreciation. Unlike art, nature is not intentional and the perceptual features of the natural world in situ are not shaped through human forces.[8]

To appreciate nature ‘as nature’ or ‘as natural’ is not just to perceive one more thing about it. Those who accept distinct approaches to the aesthetics of art and nature often limit appropriate or correct judgments to those that involve appreciating something ‘as what it is’ or ‘on its own terms’.[9] Artifacts and natural items are different kinds of things, and each is thought to place certain demands and constraints on the viewer that shape accounts of the aesthetic. This can be in virtue of the viewing attitude we adopt,[10] the perceptual features we experience as salient,[11] or by normative constraints on our appraisal.[12]

Although the separation between art and nature in aesthetics is not universally accepted, calls for a unified aesthetic theory are still widely regarded as challenging a theoretically relevant distinction in aesthetics.[13] Despite widespread debate over the conditions that are necessary and sufficient to appreciate both art and nature, a third claim is generally accepted.

Here we have the dilemma. We have independent reasons to accept each of claims 1 through 3, but they are mutually exclusive: any two together entail the denial of the third. It follows from accepting 1 and 2 that we can appreciate the marine environment at aquariums despite this environment’s not being a natural one, but this is inconsistent with accepting 3 as it conflates natural and artifactual appreciation. The conjunction of 2 and 3 affirms the artifactuality of aquariums and the need for distinct appreciations of artifacts and nature. However, it follows from this that aquariums should be appreciated as artifacts in a way that is at odds with 1. Finally, accepting 1 and 3 entails the denial of 2. If we accept that aquariums are places to appreciate marine environments, and think that nature and artifacts should be appreciated differently, it is inconsistent to hold that aquariums are artifacts.

Although there may be reasons to challenge each of the above claims, there is no obvious solution to the problem. However, since aquariums seem to be the closest we can come to an aesthetic appreciation of the marine environment, this dilemma should not be left unresolved. In the following section I examine various solutions and the arguments that have been given for rejecting each of the above premises in turn.

2.1. Objects, objectification, and appreciation

There are a number of reasons why one might take the truth of claims 2 and 3 above as reasons to reject 1. To appreciate nature as nature it is not enough that we appreciate something as if it were natural; it has to have come about by natural forces. Since aquariums are products of human artifice, we are wrong to appreciate them as products of nature. Not only do their intentional features make an aesthetic difference; they lack features relevant to appreciating the marine environment. If the balance of forms and textures, or the harmony of colors that make an aquarium display delightful, are taken as deriving from natural forces rather than human design, this changes not only how the tank appears but also the kind of pleasure we take in it. For instance, we can appreciate how well or poorly crafted a tank is only if we take it to be an intentional artifact. A tank that appears unbalanced, garish, or bland is more of an affront if we recognize that these features are intentional and could have been otherwise.

Though a display might share some visual properties with the natural marine environment, there is no reason to think that aesthetic properties are transitive between two objects that look similar but are different. A photograph of a blighted landscape can be aesthetically meritorious from how it depicts that landscape, and a painting might have no aesthetic merits as a painting despite depicting a stunning environment. Even if many perceptual features are shared between a marine environment and a display tank, it does not follow that aesthetic features are also shared. This is particularly important with nature, where it is not clear which perceptual properties are the aesthetically relevant ones.

A second reason to reject 1 is that aquariums entail an object-based model of appreciation that is inappropriate to nature.[14] To display a natural object separated from its original context is to ignore "what it is" and treat it like an artifact, focusing attention on its surface features in isolation. Viewing nature in this way changes its context and thus the aesthetic properties we perceive it as having. At best it can be appreciated formally as an abstract sculpture. To many environmental aestheticians this object model is not appropriate for nature appreciation. It treats nature as something it is not, and in doing so it denies aesthetically significant differences between art and nature.

On a weaker reading of this charge, aquarium appreciation is considered trivial. Aquariums are just spaces to showcase visually interesting species of marine creatures. This fails to emphasize appreciation of their visual features as expressing natural processes, and also encourages easy and passive appreciation of the things we already find appealing. Equating sensuous beauty with value furthermore stresses the conservation of the exotic and formally attractive, while neglecting more mundane creatures or environments.

On a stronger reading, aquarium displays make a spectacle of nature in a way that is actively incompatible with respectful viewing. Putting living things on display treats them as objects that we can use however we like with no value beyond pleasing our gaze. It casts appreciative viewing as an act of dominance that reinforces an attitude of human superiority over the rest of nature.[15] This changes both how things appear and the nature of the pleasure we take in viewing them by infusing aesthetic appreciation with the pleasure of domination. This is problematic. It seems incompatible with the disinterested attitude taken as necessary for aesthetic experience, and even if one rejects disinterestedness, it is unclear whether this kind of pleasure should be characterized as aesthetic and not something else.

2.2. The importance of acquaintance

One way of resolving this dilemma in favor of aquariums is to deny that the artificiality of aquariums interferes with visitors’ ability to appreciate the marine environment. Wollheim maintains that a central tenet of aesthetics is the principle of acquaintance.[16] This holds that firsthand experience of aesthetic objects is required for aesthetic evaluation or belief. While there is some debate over the possibility of aesthetic testimony, our aesthetic beliefs are most often deemed to be legitimate when they do not rely on any intermediary.[17] One reason to consider appreciation at the aquarium incompatible with appreciation of the marine environment itself is that we have firsthand experience of the artifact, the display tank, and not the natural environment itself.

However, aquariums, as well as other collection-based institutions such as zoos and botanical gardens, do offer firsthand experience of their living collections. One could argue that it is the collections and not the tanks that are the objects of appreciation. And so, unlike nature documentaries, paintings, and other artifacts, aquariums do not violate the principle of acquaintance. If acquaintance is satisfied and the objects of our appreciation are the displayed flora and fauna instead of the composite display tanks that house them, then the artifactual nature of aquariums need not be in conflict with appreciation of the marine environment for what it is. Additionally, this seems to fit our viewing practices: appreciative viewing at the aquarium is treated as appreciation of nature. After all, we are actually seeing seahorses, anemones, and other creatures in the tanks.

People visit aquariums for the fish, invertebrates, and other species on display. Display tanks are treated as invisible because they are filled with living specimens, which are the things visitors go to see. Visitors might notice the design of the tanks, the craft of signage and interpretive panels, and their contribution to the overall quality of the exhibits, but it is not the aesthetic qualities of the tanks that are the focus of appreciative attention here. Acknowledging the role of acquaintance is important in describing our viewing practices, but treating displays as invisible does not entail that they have no effect on our experience. Visitor studies at zoos have shown that naturalistic habitats change viewer perception of animals, and that such immersion-style displays, those that remove visible barriers between humans and animals, reduce disrespectful attention-seeking behavior in humans.[18] Since display styles can affect attitudes and behavior, denying their effect on experience is untenable.

We see living collections, but we see them in tanks lit by artificial light, with artificial surge, and among landforms shaped by humans. Display tanks are often "naturalistic" because they are constructed to replicate the appearance of a marine habitat, but they are not natural. Displays often showcase multiple species within these naturalistic habitats with interpretive texts that ask us to watch for certain behaviors, such as camouflage, that require interaction between species or with the environment. In these cases we are to appreciate the environments, not only individuals or individuals as constituent parts of the environment. Acquaintance can only account for appreciation of the individual flora and fauna, but our appreciation is often of the "scene" and of the individuals as members of species.

Another problem with acquaintance is the ontology argument raised by critics of zoos. Captive animals, they argue, are no longer like individuals in the wild. The feeding, resting, mating, growth, grooming, and other behaviors of captive members of species X are altered in response to the artificial environment to the point that the individuals lose features essential to Xs in the wild. Though captive individuals may resemble members of species X, they are so altered by captivity that they become transformed into pseudo-Xs, sharing only superficial features with their wild cousins. Pseudo-Xs are not natural animals. They are something different, artifacts created by the zoo.[19] If animals, perhaps even plants, are transformed into artifacts by the process of captivity, then our acquaintance with live collections should not be mistaken for acquaintance with nature. Since they do not express the same perceptual features, our aesthetic appreciation of an X and a pseudo-X are different. Any account of aquarium (or zoo) appreciation has to find a way to meet or mitigate the ontology argument in order to establish ex-situ appreciation of animals.

3.1. Problems with Leddy's account

Artification is undoubtedly a useful development, but it does not solve the problem of aquariums. For one, Leddy is wrong to think that the dilemma of aquarium appreciation only holds for scientific cognitivists, since scientific cognitivists are not alone in accepting my claim 3, above. One can hold that nature and art should be appreciated differently without accepting that scientific categories are the only correct appreciative categories for nature. Naturalistic aquarium displays are still artifacts, and however much scientific information one is offered by a display, it fails to be a natural environment.

Leddy's account treats display tanks as vessels presenting natural objects whose sensory properties can be viewed in either artistic-cultural or natural-scientific categories. In casting "displaying nature" as equivalent to "treating it like art," Leddy characterizes the artifactuality of aquariums as equivalent to the weak reading of the object model of appreciation. The artifactuality of aquariums (and the dilemma) can then be explained away by rejecting the prohibition against appreciating art and nature in the same way. Emphasizing deep over surface artification can dismiss lingering concerns about appropriate appreciation and its connection to respecting nature. However, the artifactuality of aquariums is independent of the permissibility of appreciative categories.

Leddy accepts that aquariums are places where we go to view nature. Yet in his account aquarium displays and souvenir shop items both count as artifying nature, despite the fact that the displays offer us firsthand experience of live collections. Of the "kitsch" souvenir shop items he says, "It is artification in the sense that non-art things, for example fish and sea-horses, are turned into something art-like through the medium of artistic representation."[29] Leddy faces a dilemma: either he tacitly accepts the distinction between art and nature that he claims to deny, or his account offers no clear role for live collections at the aquarium. If he thinks that by seeing sculptures, video displays, and art installations we can appreciate fish and seahorses without actually looking at fish and seahorses, then it follows that we can appreciate nature without an acquaintance with live collections.

While this conclusion might cheer opponents of live collections, it creates a problem for Leddy: it is not only at odds with viewing practices; it assumes a prior distinction between natural objects and artifacts. We have to conceptualize ’seahorse’ as a certain kind of natural thing prior to experiencing the visual properties of the artified object as being related to seahorses at all. Leddy must either accept that aquariums are not places to see nature, or (insofar as "seahorse" is a natural history category) that some natural historical categorization is necessary for either deep or surface artification at the aquarium.

Yet, comparing display institutions can help determine the aesthetically relevant features of displays, and how artistic and scientific contexts differ in their treatment of objects of appreciation.

4.1. How aquariums differ from art galleries

Art galleries and aquariums both offer us firsthand experience of their collections. However, their viewing and collecting practices treat acquaintance and conceptualization differently. Usually when we visit an art gallery we go to see and appreciate individual works of art. A gallery’s collection is made up of individual works, each with its own aesthetic value. We would not be satisfied if replicas or photographs replaced them because acquaintance with individual works is taken to be necessary for appreciation of works of art.[30] We develop art historical categories through seeing many individual works and coming to note standard features. Though visiting art galleries also allows us to broaden or deepen our art historical knowledge and develop critical abilities, individual works are collected for their aesthetic value, not to help satisfy these other viewing purposes. This is not the case at the aquarium.

Aquariums do not mainly showcase individual creatures so visitors can appreciate their vivid, exotic, beautiful, or delicate features. Much aquarium programming focuses on species and habitats, not individuals. An otherwise empty tank might be the best way to get a close look at a fish, but this is precisely the kind of display practice aquariums have moved away from because facilitating acquaintance with individual creatures is not considered meritorious in a display. Naturalistic habitats are aesthetically relevant parts of the display that are not just constructed to please viewers but to simulate conditions sufficient for the animals to thrive. Seeing the individual creatures on display is not only meant to enrich our understanding and appreciation of those individuals but also of the marine environment more broadly: from experiencing some seahorse’s elegance, to recognizing the value of preserving seahorse habitat outside of the aquarium. This seems to require using individuals to stand in for their species in order to foster aesthetic generalizations.

Curatorship of exhibits at either art galleries or aquariums might emphasize certain perceptual or aesthetic features, or draw our attention to particular historical or ecological relationships. Whether display tanks are presented in ways that emphasize artistic or scientific concepts, the husbandry of the animals, the construction of the tanks, and the role of individual creatures in aquarium collections are all grounded in the marine sciences.

4.2. How aquariums differ from the wild

One of the ways in which the marine life that we see in aquariums differs from what we see in the wild is that the creatures in the aquarium are individuals, but they are also specimens. At the Vancouver Aquarium, all of the Beluga whales have names and their individual appearances, characteristics, preferences, and habits are part of how they are presented to visitors in both the exhibit signage and interpretative talks. However, they are not there merely to be appreciated as individuals. They are also studied, fed, cared for, and interpreted as beluga whales. Each whale is both an individual and an exemplar of the species whose defining qualities also constitute part of the interpretation. This is what it means to be a specimen within a collection-based scientific institution. Visitors are acquainted with each whale and learn to see the whales as both individuals and members of a species. To ignore the individuality of each whale and our acquaintance with it as such is to lose the basis for aesthetic appreciation; we might as well read a book about belugas. To ignore what individuals share is to ignore the educational and scientific mission of aquariums and the purpose of live collections.

In the wild we might not know what is typical of a habitat, what is necessary for the survival of the creatures that live there, or if what we see is evidence of environmental health or decay. In display tanks habitats are designed to both support and showcase marine life. They are constructed to exhibit typical features but are also idealized. Species are separated in order to avoid predation in displays. Habitats are often spatially condensed, exhibiting more biological density than one would see in the wild. Seascape features are chosen for their visual appearance and plants are arranged to achieve a certain look. The habitats are aestheticized, but only within the bounds of typicality for that type of environment, so their beauty must reflect that of its environment.

Although aestheticisation of marine environments may be part of aquarium practice, it is not primarily through artification or the object model of appreciation. It is based on marine biological knowledge as well as principles of display and interpretation developed for public science. The artifactuality of aquariums does not fit the classic distinction between nature and art. Aquarium displays are, rather, interstitial objects. Between nature and pure artifice, they are objects that demand a different sort of appreciative category that accounts for their scientific, educational, and aesthetic criteria. Since aquarium displays are artifacts, they fall under prescriptions to appreciate them as products of intentional human practices, and to do so requires an understanding of their artifactuality. Accounting for aquarium displays in marine appreciation requires a precise theory of their artifactual kind. This should include the purpose they are designed to fulfill and what makes them successful artifacts of that kind.

4.3. Aquarium displays as scientific representations

Aquarium displays should be considered scientific representations of marine environments. They are representations because they stand in for the environment, so that seeing the display is meant to be like seeing the environment. The features of displays are constrained by and meant to reflect those of the target environment in such a way that, if the environment had been different, the display would also have been different. Displays do not present each and every feature of the environment they represent, they are interpretations. Accordingly, they present a certain understanding of that environment both by the properties they represent and those they leave out. As scientific representations, aquarium displays are best considered as physical models of marine environments that simplify, idealize, and exemplify the visual, ecological, and aesthetic properties of those environments. Considering aquarium displays as representational models clarifies their role in aquariums and their success conditions.

Modeling in displays aims to establish a kind of isomorphic similarity between the environmental conditions of the environments and those represented by the tanks, but this is not just based on appearance. The similarity between aquarium displays and the environments they represent is not merely at the level of visually appealing features but also at that of the underlying explanations for these appearances. Display tanks are intended to be beautiful and educational but they also serve as research sites. Aquarium science has long been a way for scientists to understand species but they are also useful for understanding ecological interaction. Both in-house researchers and collaborators use aquarium tanks to understand the requirements of species and the balance of particular ecosystems. This is often an outgrowth of animal husbandry; however, it also informs considerations of merit in displays.

For example, the giant green anemone requires certain surge, light, water temperature, and nutrient conditions to thrive and to display its characteristic brilliant color. Good displays have specimens that are true to type and habitats that allow individuals to display typical features of the species. A giant green anemone that is pale and limp is not displaying its typical features, so it does not serve as a good exemplar of the species. This could be because it is idiosyncratically pale or because there is something inadequate in the habitat. A display that fails to show typical features or that fails to interpret idiosyncratic features fails in its purpose.

Although they may be idealized and crafted to be visually pleasing, aestheticisation cannot occur at the expense of accuracy. For this, reason mixing species that would not coexist naturally is frowned upon in displays. So is adding fanciful ornaments, though some displays feature bottles and other human debris if those are frequently found in an environment.

In artistic representations of the natural world, accuracy is not so meritorious. Scientific or ecological accuracy is no more a merit in landscape painting than in abstract painting and can, in fact, count as an aesthetic demerit if it interferes with other aesthetic features. A landscape painting can be a good painting even if it misrepresents the scene or combines plants that would never co-exist. An aquarium display that mixed species might be beautiful but it would suffer demerits as a display. In other scientific representations, accuracy can count as a merit or a demerit. In biological drawings, accuracy must always be balanced against simplicity, since the purpose of these drawings is often educational. Natural history illustrations represent the typical features of species and computational models represent ecosystem relationships, but their accuracy does not also consist in sustaining life. The accuracy of aquarium displays is entwined with the typicality of the specimens they house and the environmental conditions that sustain them.

However, aquarium displays are not just models assessed on accuracy. Public display and education are also part of their function. If our appreciative attention takes displays merely as presenting individuals without considering that they are artifacts based on marine biological knowledge and practice, we miss the point that these are living creatures existing in a sort of community and serving scientific purposes. Even when an exhibit does not offer scientific information in the text, a good exhibit encourages meaningful visual engagement and conceptualization, not mere spectatorship. It should engage us with the individuals and the habitat but also afford new ways to think, imagine, and connect our experience with the broader environment. This adheres to principles of interpretation. The features that make aquarium displays successful as models in public institutions are close to what allows them to be objects for appropriate appreciation of the marine environment.