The Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College will present the exhibition Menagerie: Animals in Art from the Wellin Museum from September 7, 2024, through June 8, 2025. A large survey showcasing hundreds of artworks and artifacts drawn from the museum’s collection, Menagerie explores how humans have employed animal iconography across all areas of cultural production, from the ancient world to the present day. The exhibition includes works that engage with animal imagery for symbolic, cultural, ceremonial, and religious purposes; as decorative motifs; and to comment—often satirically—upon human relations and events.
Images of insects, fish, birds, and mammals operate as symbols and subjects—from their use as signifiers in cultural and religious contexts, to the documentation of creatures for study or entertainment. Representations of animals have been used to project a sense of power, embody certain virtues or vices, and for decoration, among other purposes. In the exhibition, as in nature, some animals may be difficult to spot, while others exist only in myth and legend.
Explains the Wellin Museum’s Collections Curator Elizabeth Shannon, PhD, “The persistent presence of creatures in art throughout time and across cultures reflects the diverse roles that wild and domesticated animals play in our lives. A dog might be a dangerous threat, a symbol of protection, or a beloved family member, while an insect in its natural habitat may be perceived as a pest if humans encroach on its environment.”
The exhibition also draws attention to the scope of the Wellin’s collection. Selections include objects from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; Mesoamerican and Andean artifacts; artworks from Medieval, Renaissance and 19th century Europe; prints, drawings, and textiles from East Asia; Persian illuminated manuscripts; and global modern and contemporary art.
Works by such contemporary artists as Julie Buffalohead, Asad Faulwell, Diego Romero, Ibrahim Said, Shahzia Sikander, and Celia Vasquez Yui, and such 18th- and 19th-century artists as Francisco de Goya and Édouard Manet are presented in the exhibition as ways to explore and question how animals have been seen and depicted by humans throughout time.
Other artists featured in the exhibition include Heinrich Aldegrever, Karel Appel, Thomas Hart Benton, Félix Bracquemond, William Brice, Flora Winegar Brigham, Honoré Daumier, Dorothy Dehner, Thornton Dial, Albrecht Dürer, Stefano della Bella, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Giorgio Ghisi, Henry Horenstein, Walter Iooss, Yun-Fei Ji, George Luks, Danny Lyon, Édouard Manet, Thomas Nast, William Nicholson, Sénèque Obin, Ohara Koson, William C. Palmer, Georg Pencz, Patricia Potter, Dorothy Shakespear, Calista M. Sherman, Otto Soglow, Toyen, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Walter Williams, and Craig Zammiello.
Menagerie encourages us to consider the scope, meaning, and value of our interactions with animals, and, most importantly, to recognize our implicit interdependence. While the exhibition primarily focuses on nonhuman creatures, every object on view is the result of human creative effort and the depiction of each animal is filtered through its maker’s consciousness.
The objects in Menagerie reveal the complex, and sometimes volatile, interconnection between animals and humans. Moreover, some of these artworks illustrate the considerable stress humans have placed on our shared ecosystem. In examining the enduring bond between people and animals, Menagerie not only provides an avenue for imagining a sustainable future, but one in which humans and the natural world might find balance.
Menagerie: Animals in Art from the Wellin Museum is curated by the Wellin Museum’s Collections Curator Elizabeth Shannon, PhD.
Press release from the Wellin Museum of Art
Image: Asad Faulwell. Artifice. 2022. Acrylic, pins and photo collage on canvas. 101.6 × 76.2 cm. Photography by John Bentham. Purchase, William G Roehrick ’34 Art Acquisition and Preservation Fund. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
