Hall of Interdependence

Reaching into the far end of the Oceans Divided gallery are rolling, folding forms, somehow familiar but of enormous scale. This is the visitors' introduction to the Hall of Interdependence, a gallery where the pyramid of life is inverted and humans are at the bottom.

Visitors climb a short stair into a vast, prismatic glassy volume filled with an enormous, interwoven white sculptural composition — part animal, part plant, part insect, part microbe. This is the interdependent web of life. Each form depicted depends in some particular way on the others. The armature of the composition is a Panamanian fig tree (Ficus) and its co-evolutionary partners: two wasps and a nematode. But endless other plants and animals share interdependent relationships with or upon the fig tree. Several key examples of these complete the sculpture's composition. The sculpture also houses several study cases an a small interior installation and storytelling space.

Running around the perimeter of the gallery are study tables which relate the forms of the sculpture to the views from the windows. Interdependence, the web of life and humanity's vital role in protecting it are put into the contexts of the park's own ecologies, the Canal, the Bay of Panama and the urban interdependencies of Panama City.