Besides being the name of the heroine in The Tempest, and the warning policemen read to the people they’re arresting, Miranda was the corn snake I owned from 1998 until her death in February 2010. I’m interested in snakes and I write about them a lot (see my novel, Lady of the Snakes, for instance), partly because of how deep and ambiguous their roots are in the culture. On the one hand, the serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, resulting in those anchors of human existence: sex, shame, hard work, pain in childbirth, and death. On the other, the Greeks venerated snakes as symbols (and sometimes actual vehicles) of healing, which is why you see pictures of them spiraling up staffs on the doors of ambulances and emergency rooms (caduceus). Because they shed, snakes symbolize rebirth. This wealth of associations, along with the visceral human response to the sight of one, makes the snake a natural mascot for a blog about a contemporary art museum. Doesn’t it?

The name “Miranda” derives from the Latin word mirari—to admire or to look at wonderingly. “Miranda” is also a feminine form of “mirandus,” meaning wonderful, strange, or singular.

ICA’s blog Miranda offers a singular view inside the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Organizing exhibitions, unpacking art crates, cooking dinner for artists and speakers, raising money, and the secret spaces of ICA: Miranda connects you to everything that goes on at a small, internationally renowned contemporary art museum.

To join Miranda‘s mailing list, or to send comments, email miranda@icaphila.org.

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Rachel Pastan is Editor-at-Large at the Institute of Contemporary Art. When she’s not composing grants, editing wall text, or retrieving dangling participles, she blogs about what goes on at a small but fabulous university-affiliated art museum. In her other life, she writes novels and teaches fiction at the Bennington Writing Seminars. For more information, visit www.rachelpastan.com.