Wesleyan University’s Davison Art Center presents “Bestiary” February 8 through March 7, 2019
The public is invited to attend the opening reception and gallery talk on Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 5pm at the Davison Art Center, located at 301 High Street on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, Connecticut. There will be a gallery talk by Kari Weil, University Professor, Environmental Studies, College of the Environment and College of Letters, and Co-Coordinator, Animal Studies, and author of “Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now” (Columbia, 2012). The opening reception is free.
About the Exhibition
"Bestiary" takes its inspiration from medieval compendia of wondrous creatures, both natural and fantastic. This exhibition stages creaturely encounters between gallery visitors and their non-human counterparts. In viewing these works, we might wonder at changing conceptions of bestial subjectivity across different cultural contexts and movements including the Renaissance, Romanticism, Surrealism, and our own contemporary moment. Works in this exhibition include an anonymous fifteenth-century engraving of a lion, a dragon, and a fox quarreling; a monumental lobster by Richard Mueller; and an ethereal anemone by Kiki Smith. Artists represented in this exhibition also include George Stubbs, Édouard Manet, Eugène Delacroix, Eadweard Muybridge, and Alen MacWeeney, among many others.
Image for Editors
A digital image suitable for reproduction is available upon request. Please note that the image may be used only in direct connection with this press release or with other timely coverage of the exhibition it concerns. For further information please contact Andrew Chatfield, Director, Arts Communication at (860) 685-2806 or achatfield@wesleyan.edu.
Meret Oppenheim (Swiss, 1913–1985). "Silvertail (Silberschwanz)," 1976. From "Parapapillonneries." Lithograph. Sheet: 460 x 580 mm (18.1 x 22.8 in.). DAC accession number 2002.29.4. Gift of Susan and Charles M. Young, 2002. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zurich (photo: R. Lee).
Listen to a conversation between Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee and Curator of the Davison Art Center Miya Tokumitsu about this exhibition on the Center for the Arts Radio Hour: