Bright Lit Place Gallery Weekend

See WLRN's Bright Lit Place podcast in a different light, photography by Patrick Farrell capturing profound images throughout the making of the podcast.

Join us as WLRN hosts for one weekend only, a pop-up gallery at the heart of it all, The Everglades. On Saturday, January 11, reporter Jenny Staletovich will moderate a panel discussion regarding the future of the everglades and where restoration stands now. Afterwards, a lite bite reception to continue the conversation!

This event is free to the public.

Gallery Open 9AM - 5PM

12PM - Panel discussion with Jenny Staletovich and Erik Stabenau, Ph.D.

1PM - Lite Bite Reception

Gallery Open 9AM - 5PM

When the U.S. government and state of Florida unveiled a new plan to save the Everglades in 2000, the sprawling blueprint to restore the wetlands became the largest hydrological restoration effort in the nation's history. Two decades later, only one project is complete, and the Everglades is still dying. Bright Lit Place heads into the swamp to meet its first inhabitants, the scientists who study it and the warring sides struggling to find a way out of the muck.

Patrick Farrell is a Miami native and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who worked for 32 years at the Miami Herald, where he covered issues in South Florida and the United States, as well as Cuba, Haiti, Turkey and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. His images from a brutal hurricane season in Haiti in 2009 won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography; he also was part of the Herald staff that won the 1993 Pulitzer for Public Service for coverage of Hurricane Andrew and was on a team whose work on a multi-media immigration project received the 2016 Edward R. Murrow Award. He currently is a lecturer for the School of Communication at the University of Miami, his alma mater. He and his wife, Jodi Mailander Farrell, have lived since 1997 in Coconut Grove, where they raised their two daughters.

Erik Stabenau, Ph.D.(Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Miami, 2004) is the Restoration Sciences Branch Chief for the National Park Service at the South Florida Natural Resources Center of Everglades National Park in Homestead, Florida. With over 20 years of federal service, his work has ranged from manager of the marine and freshwater monitoring network, database development and management, and lead scientist for oceanographic and coastal ocean modeling. As Restoration Sciences Branch Chief he guides interagency work in support of the Greater Everglades restoration program. His work has focused on applied science, using combinations of modeling and observational data to guide water management actions and identify the relative benefits of features within large-scale restoration projects. He is the park’s representative on multiple interagency teams, serving as Vice-Chair of both the Everglades Restoration program’s Science Coordination Group and the Florida’s Coral Reef Coordination Team, and as a member of the Biscayne Bay Watershed Management Advisory Board.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, 40001 State Highway 9336, Homestead, United States