Creatures Great and Small: Animals from the UW Art Museum Collection

UW Art Museum Regional Touring Exhibition Program

March 14 - December 23, 2020

Rotunda Gallery 

 

Humans have long been fascinated with the natural world, especially with our fellow creatures. Evolutionary and biological connections, coupled with our close proximity on a shared planet, result in a complicated relationship with animals. Some animals are captured, studied, and domesticated by humans, while others remain mysterious and wild, captured only through art. Prehistoric cave paintings – the earliest artistic representations on the historical record – depict animals. Across cultures, they are featured in folktales, fables, legends, and myths. Personified as kind, wise, wicked, or clever, animals are often used to teach valuable lessons about humanity while instilling beliefs about the world.

This exhibition, featuring selections from the permanent collection, invites the viewer to reflect on the creatures that we have come to bond with as family, rely on for subsistence, and those that have come to represent untamed wilderness. What stories or truths have animals taught you? What animal tales come to mind? What is your relationship to creatures great and small?

• Regional Touring Exhibition Service

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funded in part by the Patricia R. Guthrie Special Exhibits Gallery Endowment and the Wyoming Arts Council through the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming State Legislature.

 

 

Images:

 

Alan H. Crane (American, 1901-1969), Winged Fisherman, 1940, lithograph, 9-7/8 x 13-3/4 inches, gift of A. Rex Rivolo, 2004.7.23

Wolfgang Pogzeba (German/American, 1936-1982), Prairie Monarch, 1965, etching, 9-1/4 x 11-3/4 inches, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Millman, 1974.16.5