"Natural History: Group Show"
2002-05-03 until 2002-06-01
Aron Packer Gallery
Chicago, IL, USA United States of America

The Natural History Museum has been around for years in various states and forms. From Cabinets of Curiosities (usually cases with samples of dead specimens preserved in formaldehyde, with early examples documented as early as 1500 A.D. in the courts of Italian princes), to the mostly now forgotten roadside museum, to the current mausoleums of things past and gone, with Chicago's Field Museum being one of the biggest, if not the best in the country. These museums cast wide nets in terms of the influence they have had on art and artists in contemporary culture.

Aron Packer Gallery is pleased to present a small survey of some of the artists working in relation to this genre locally, nationally, and internationally. The gallery transforms into a curiosity cabinet of its own, finding connections and relationships among various works, playing off ideas of specimen and artifact, and categorization and presentation.

Some artists worth noting are:

Lynne Brown - Close-up Photographs of jar specimens of indiscriminant origin
Mark Dion / J. Morgan Puett - A collaborative tribute to the interdisciplinary fields of science
Chris Garofalo - A modern curiosity cabinet filled with ceramic specimens of an evolutionary road not taken
Nancy Hild - A diptych of a faux aviary featuring more than forty detailed bird specimens
Mark Hayward - Bell jars and cases from this curator at the Museum of Science and Industry
Donald Stahlke - Small dioramas of supposed wildman sightings
Frances Whitehead - Examination and specimen table involving a set of encyclopedias, core samples of same, a microscope, and a vintage glass microfiche
David Wilson - Premiere of the Jubilee Catalog from the museum of jurassic technology

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Illinois

Other Important Exhibitions in United States