C U R I O U S E R . 2011

Art, Science, and the Secret Lives of Specimens . 2011

A NEW EXHIBIT at the

Museum of Natural History + Planetarium
Roger Williams Park • Providence, Rhode Island


November 12, 2011 through September 2012

Featuring New Installations By New England Artists:
- Pippi Zornoza
- Nick+Erin Potter
- Judith G. Klausner
- Victor Signore
- Gina Siepel
(curated by Erik Carlson and Erica Carpenter)

For the second year running, Providence’s Museum of Natural History has invited a group of contemporary artists to create new works drawing from over 250,000 rarely-seen items held in its Victorian collections. Last year’s show offered a unique lens on the Victorian obsession with natural studies, concerning itself with the era’s drive to collect and categorize all of nature’s bounty and with notions of nature as inexhaustible.

For the 2011 exhibit, five New England artists will create works that present specimens from the Museum’s 19th century collections in a transformative light, seeking out secret narratives, latent myths and hidden agendas within a vast catalogue of pinned insects, taxidermy animals, boxed birds’ eggs and more. Curiouser‘s innovative works invite viewers to look forward as well as back, exploring the ‘history of natural history’ while drawing connections to our own complex relationships with nature today.

Museum of Natural History
Roger Williams Park
1000 Elmwood Avenue
Providence, RI

Telephone: 401-785-9457 x 221
email: info@msnathist.com
Website: http://cityof.providenceri.com/museum

DIRECTIONS: http://cityof.providenceri.com/museum/plan-your-visit


‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice.…
Alice’s exclamation at Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland offers a compelling reflection of the Victorian obsession with the natural world. As science, trade and travel entered a new era, the old frontiers rolled back to reveal a fantastic array of animal, mineral and vegetable marvels from far‐flung lands. The era’s enthusiasm for this wide new world was not just academic: everyday people got in on the natural history movement, becoming avid collectors of the life they found around them. Though we may find it hard to believe today, at the height of the Victorian era natural history was its own sort of pop culture.

Curiouser was conceived and curated by Erik Carlson and Erica Carpenter, and will be on display from November 12, 2011 through September 2012

Curiouser is made possible in part by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts

LINK to CURIOUS MAGIC event webpage > > >

LINK to last year's exhibit > > >