The Guild Hall's exhibitions provide the perfect platform for learning about the arts through works on view and access to the artists who create them. Additionally, the Guild Hall Museum Admission is free thanks to Dime Community Bank and Landscape Details.

It's a guided tour of Guild Hall's exhibitions for up to 30 people. This fully-led tour invites visitors to look closely and discuss works on view. Tours last about an hour, and are led by the Lewis B. Cullman Associate Curator for Learning & Public Engagement and Education Staff.

To know more about the tour, please contact The Lewis B. Cullman Associate Curator for Learning & Public Engagement, Casey Dalene at cdalene@guildhall.org.

The Museum Director and Curators offer an in-depth tour for up to 30 people. This fully-led tour offers a scholarly insight into the work and practice of each exhibiting artist, as well as a history of the Guild Hall Museum.

To reserve a tour, please contact Museum Director/Chief Curator, Christina Strassfield at museum@guildhall.org at least three weeks before your visit.

Arranged specifically for teachers and students, this museum tour and the neighboring workshop offer a space to freely observe the work on view, discuss student observations and the history & crafts of the specific artists, and immediately apply that learning in an artist-led workshop. Visits last from an hour to ninety-minutes, and are led by Education Staff and a guest Teaching Artist.

To get more information, please contact The Pai Kenner Senior Associate for Learning & Public Engagement, Anthony Madonna at amadonna@guildhall.org.

The Family ARTivity Guide encourages families of all agas to collectively explore the Guild Hall galleries. Using the guide to observe and discuss the works on view, families will be introduced to various ways of engaging with the work, like drawing, discussing, writing, and even dancing! Family ARTivity Guides are available on site at Guild Hall, or digitally available to complete at home with our Matterport tours.

Lunar New Year used to be a daylong celebration for us. My parents tried really hard to recreate the season for my sisters and me here in America. On New Year's day, my family, including all my uncles, aunts, and cousins, dressed in new clothes, gathered at my grandma's house. Kids were pulled out of school, and adults took the day off. The celebration lasted throughout the day and late into the night, with one tradition following another.

Fast-forward to 2019: My grandma has passed away, the adults are elderly, and the kids have grown up and are living their own life. The Lunar New Year celebration is no longer as elaborate (精心计划的) as it used to be. As we melt into American culture, the "olden ways", as we call them, have fallen away. Life seems to have got busier and much more complex, but I often feel something is missing.

For us first-generation kids, it is often easier to let go of the traditions and customs of our parents'. They don't mean as much to us as they do for them. At the same time, they are still a part of our culture. I realized that the diaspora (流散) of young Asian Americans in the United States is not unique to me. It is an ongoing inner struggle that we all wrestle with. My Asian features and skin color do not entirely define who I am. I am as much a "hamburger" guy as a "rice" individual. I can't quite fully claim that I am an American and not fully Asian. There isn't really a check box that I can mark. I am Chinese-Vietnamese-Asian-American.

I now have two little boys. It saddens me to think they will never be able to experience what my sisters and I did as little kids during this holiday. Recently, for the first time, I've hung up Lunar New Year decorations around the house and replaced our Christmas wreath (花环) on the front door with decorative firecrackers. In a way, my sons are forcing me to slow down and explore my heritage.

I suppose sometimes we need to look back in order to gain clarity on the path ahead.

Shifting to a new food freezing method could make for safer and better quality frozen foods while saving energy and reducing carbon emissions, according to a new study.

“A complete change over to this new method of food freezing worldwide could cut energy use by as much as 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours each year while reducing the carbon emissions that go along with generating that power by 4.6 billion kilograms, the equal to removing roughly one million cars from roads,” said the research food technologist Cristina Bilbao-Sainz.

The new freezing method, called isochoric freezing (等容冷冻), works by storing foods in a sealed, rigid container — typically made of hard plastic or metal— completely filled with a liquid such as water. Unlike conventional freezing in which the food is exposed to the air and freezes solid at temperatures below 32 degrees F, isochoric freezing preserves food without turning it to solid ice.

As long as the food stays immersed (浸入的) in the liquid part, it is protected from ice crystallization (结晶), which is the main threat to food quality.

“Energy savings come from not having to freeze foods completely solid, which uses a huge amount of energy, plus there is no need to turn to energy-consuming cold storage methods such as quick freezing to avoid ice crystal formation,” Bilbao-Sainz said. Isochoric freezing also allows for higher quality storage of fresh foods that are otherwise difficult to preserve with conventional freezing. Another benefit is that it also kills microbial pollutants during processing.

“The entire food production chain could use isochoric freezing. The process will even work in a person’s freezer at home after they purchase a product— all without requiring any major investments in new equipment,” said Tara McHugh, co-leader of this study. “With all of the many potential benefits, if this advanced concept catches on, it could be the next revolution in freezing foods.”

The pace of our lives is closely linked with so many things: hormonal changes, growing pains, and dental development. Most of us don’t remember teething, but plenty recall having our wisdom teeth erupt. It’s just one dental milestone and one of three molar (磨牙) milestones, but until recently we had no idea why wisdom teeth emerged so late in life.

“It turns out that our jaws develop very slowly, likely due to our overall slow life histories and, in combination with our short faces, resulting in our very late ages at molar emergence,” said Gary Schwartz, the author of the paper. It’s easy to forget that our teeth undergo quite a bit of mechanical pressure as they chew down on food, as does your entire jaw structure. If wisdom teeth emerged earlier, the molars could actually damage the jaw they’re growing out of.

All of this is the result of two fundamental things about humans: we have long lives and short faces. Life, short as it may seem, is pretty stretched out for humans in comparison with other creatures, even other primates (灵长类). We spend an extraordinarily long period just becoming adults. Unlike our primate cousins, our faces are quite flat. Just take a look at gorillas (大猩猩), you’ll notice that their jaws stick out such that their mouths are mostly in front of their brain. The combination of these factors means that our jaws can’t accommodate that final set of molars until fairly late in life.

Lots of people in the US get their wisdom teeth taken out, which might make you think that they’re some kind of evolutionary leftover. But the truth is that you don’t necessarily need to get them removed. In the UK, for instance, wisdom teeth are only removed if they become problematic, as the National Health Service notes that there is otherwise no proven benefit (but there is the added complication of having a minor surgery).