On Thursday, February 7, 2019 the opening reception for Bestiary was held at the Davison Art Center, with 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).
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.
The exhibition will be on display through Thursday, March 7, 2019.
Photos by Richard Marinelli. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.
