Fish, Flowers & Flying Things: Nature at the Spencer

Exhibition

Joseph W. Lampo, curator

Kress Gallery, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

This exhibition was organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators held in Lawrence August 4-9, 2002. The exhibition presents renderings of natural subjects: plants, mammals, fish, birds, insects, and reptiles and amphibians, in many media by American, European, and Asian artists from the 16th century to the present. Decorative arts objects as well as paintings, prints, and sculpture provide a varied look at the way flora and fauna have been depicted, at times in imaginative or fantastic ways. Many of the objects, such as a Chinese silk robe precisely painted with biologically accurate varieties of butterflies and Alan Tolkanson’s large cottonwood limestone abstract sculpture, are seldom on view.