Arthur Mange: Biologist, photographer

Emeritus Professor Arthur P. Mange was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1931. He graduated from Cornell University in 1954 with a Bachelor of Engineering Physics and served for two years in the U. S. Army. He received graduate degrees in genetics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison -- a Masters in 1958 and PhD in 1963. He did research for a year at Western Reserve University in Cleveland and then joined the Zoology Department (later the Biology Department) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he served for 31 years from 1964 to 1995. He also did fruit fly research at the University of Washington in Seattle for a year and taught for a semester at the University of California, San Diego.

This research included field studies on the structure of a human population, the Hutterites, a religious isolate on the plains states of the United States and Canada. He and his wife, Elaine Johansen Mange were the authors of four textbooks on human genetics, one of which earned awards from both the American Medical Writers Association and the Text and Academic Authors Association. He was also active in the writing program at the University wherein students in their junior year wrote papers applicable to their own majors.

Throughout his scientific career, Mange pursued a strong interest in photography, especially in the era of black and white film, when he did his own darkroom work. Since 2013, he, like most others, has relied on the convenience of digital photography. A list of his twenty or so, mostly solo exhibits from 1983 to 2022 is appended below. The themes of his photographs include plants and animals, whimsical signs, architectural details, gravestones, attention-grabbing shadows, travel (including Iceland, Norway, Turkey, Morocco, Germany, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico,), wires, and close-ups (where it is not always obvious what the viewer sees). Thanks to SCUA (Special Collections and University Archives) about seventeen hundred of Mange’s black and white prints (up to 11 x 14 inches) have been stored and catalogued at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. These photos can be viewed online at https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/collection/muph044.

In addition to exhibitions, Mange has donated photographs for fund-raising events at New York University, the Cooley Dickinson Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center, the Amherst Historical Society, and the Jones Library. For 17 years he was a member of the committee that administers the Burnett Gallery, the community-oriented exhibition space at the Jones Library in Amherst.

PHOTOGRAPHIC SHOWS by Arthur Mange

Solo shows (except as noted)
July 2015, in roughly chronological order

Across the Valley (from Cummington to New Salem)

• March 1983. Burnett Gallery at the Jones Library, 43 Amity Street, Amherst

Delight in Familiar Forms (celebrating some well-known plants and animals)

• October 1984. Hitchcock Center for the Environment, 525 South Pleasant Street, Amherst

Ring Bell to Admit Bird

• July 2000. Jones Library (entryway), 43 Amity Street, Amherst. (Pictures of whimsical signs)

Net Prophet

• Dec. 2000. Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Northampton, 30 Locust Street, Northampton. (More whimsical signs)

Architectural Sights - Big and Small

• January 2002. Burnett Gallery at the Jones Library, 43 Amity Street, Amherst.

Underfoot -- Pictures taken looking down

• August 2005. Leverett Library Community Room, 75 Montague Road, Leverett.

The Southwest

• November 2005, with oil painter, Jacques Graton of Pelham. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 253 Triangle Street, Amherst.

Window Treatments

• October 2006. Robert Floyd Photographic Gallery, Southampton, Mass.

Iceland

• May and June 2007. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 253 Triangle Street, Amherst

Guessing Game (Guess at the subject before looking at the label)

• June 2007. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 6 Main Street, Florence

Norway

• March and April, 2009. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 253 Triangle Street, Amherst

Gravestones and Memorials

• September and October 2010. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 253 Triangle Street, Amherst

Close-ups

• July and August 2011. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 390 College Street, Amherst

Old Massachusetts Gravestones

• September and October 2011. Wendell Free Library, 7 Wendell Depot Road

Close-ups

• January and February 2012. Amherst Chamber of Commerce, 28 Amity Street, Amherst

Water Scenes

• April 2013 - April 2014. Cooley Dickinson Blood Drawing Unit, 170 University Drive, Amherst [9 pictures]

Trees of Life

• July 2013, with Donald David of Amherst. Hope and Feathers Gallery, 319 Main Street, Amherst
• September and October 2013, with Donald David of Amherst. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 253 Triangle Street, Amherst
• April 2014 - July 2015 Cooley Dickinson Blood Drawing Unit, 170 University Drive, Amherst [9 pictures]

Down to the Wire

• August 2014. Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, 28 Amity Street, Amherst
• September - October 2014. Northampton Cooperative Bank, 6 Main Street, Florence
• July 2015 - present. Cooley Dickinson Blood Drawing Unit, 170 University Drive, Amherst [9 pictures]

Around and About in Amherst

• April 2021. TD Bank, 243 Triangle Street, Amherst [10 photos]
• July and August 2021. Greenfield/Northampton Cooperative Bank, 390 College Street, Amherst [10 photos]

Wired

• May 2022. joneslibrary.org/virtualburnett. Online exhibit. [24 pictures]

In addition, as a long-time member of the Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists, I have been part of their group shows, over the years, at the Valley Photo Center in Springfield, the Chestnut Building Corridor at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield (a half dozen times), the offices of Senator Stan Rosenberg at the State House in Boston, The House of Art in Monson, the Town Hall in Amherst, the Nashawannuck Gallery in Easthampton, and the Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls. I have also been part of several additional group shows at the Hope and Feathers Gallery and at the A3 Gallery in Amherst. I have donated four flower and leaf pictures to Valley Medical Group for patient examination rooms. Also, I have shown about 9 photos for varying lengths of time at the Cooley Dickinson Blood Drawing unit at 170 University Drive in Amherst as follows: 2013, Water Scenes; 2014, Trees; 2015, Down to the Wire; and 2016 to present, Plant Shapes.