As a child, Dr. Kakani Katija dreamed of being an astronaut. She trained as an aerospace engineer but eventually became captivated by an even less explored environment than space: our Earth’s oceans. As a bioengineer, instead of searching space for signs of life, she studies the waters that are teeming with it. Dr. Katija hopes to illuminate the twilight zones of the ocean — its little explored midwaters — with technology inspired by the creatures who live in it.

Single tickets on sale at https://tickets.kauffmancenter.org/19766.

Subscriptions are also available here.

For more than 20 years, renowned cave photographer Robbie Shone has traveled to remote parts of the world to illuminate and document the world’s deepest, largest and longest known cave systems. In 2018, he joined a team on a National Geographic expedition to Abkhazia, Georgia, to descend to the bottom of Veryovkina, the deepest known cave in the world. But when a sudden flood pulse hit, Shone and the team had to climb for their lives to escape the rapidly rising waters. Join him for a first-hand account of this gripping adventure and an inside look at the mesmerizing beauty of one of the world’s last known frontiers of exploration.

Single tickets on sale at https://tickets.kauffmancenter.org/19763.

Subscriptions are also available here.

Discover how the iconic Olmec heads of Mexico were created, explore the true meaning behind the imposing Teotihuacan pyramids and get a peek into the culture and daily life in the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Art historian and microarcheologist Dr. Diana Magaloni-Kerpel uncovers millennia-old murals and sculptures throughout Mexico and Central America — then studies them to understand what their colors, textures and techniques reveal about these ancient cultures. Join her as she brings ancient Mesoamerican civilizations to life in a way you’ve never seen before.

Single tickets on sale at https://tickets.kauffmancenter.org/19760.

Subscriptions are also available here.

With landscapes spanning the towering Himalaya, arid plains and dense jungles, India is home to an unmatched diversity of wild cats. While many of the big cats are well known and thoroughly documented, photographer and filmmaker Sandesh Kadur is on a mission to highlight the country’s lesser-known felines in order to protect their future. Discover the tiny, grumpy-faced Pallas’s cat, the fishing cat that jumps into water to catch its prey, and the ancient, elusive clouded leopard. Through Kadur’s captivating images and video, you’ll get a unique and up-close look at a world of wild cats.

Single tickets on sale at https://tickets.kauffmancenter.org/19757.

Subscriptions are also available here.

At the Heart of the Matter is a solo exhibition of new work by artist Judith G. Levy. Throughout the exhibit, she wrestles with the heaviness of contemporary life, saturated by gender-based violence, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, ecological disaster, and the global pandemic. In the midst of seemingly ceaseless emergency, this exhibition stakes its claims on empathy, care, and a shared humanity. Like all forms of representation in her practice, the individual works are both real and metaphorical, playful and sincere. Using still and moving images and found objects, she moves across mediums, gently nudging visual and material cultures toward more compassionate horizons.

Levy depicts everyday objects as agents that reveal a shared human vulnerability. The front door acts as a threshold into the sanctity of home, while doubling as protection from the potential perils of the world beyond. The exhibit also reflects on the fluidity of global and local identities in a series of portraits photographed in simple, natural light. All of the participants are connected to the artist through trusted, word-of-mouth networks. Often dressed to reference their countries of origin, they cradle vegetables and fruits that are common, though not native to the United States. The series is a complex expression of immigration provoking viewers to consider their assumptions behind feelings of familiarity and difference. Old travel postcards are overpainted to reconstruct their locations, transformed by drought and flooding in present times and our not too distant futures. Through worn away landscapes and monuments, this work turns ironically on the souvenir’s inherent nostalgia for a lost world that was always predicated on the devaluation of lives and ecologies.