Museum Collections Through the Eyes of Local Artists
August 28 - October 14, 2023
Reception and Drawing Night: September 28, 5 p.m.
Puget Sound Museum of Natural History Education and Outreach Director Madison Mayfield will give a twenty minute talk about museum specimens and art in museum spaces as a way to give more context to the show and some history/background about museum collections and their tie to science art. Then, we will transition to drawing from still life specimens from the Natural History Museum's collection.
The Puget Sound Museum of Natural History is one of the Pacific Northwest's significant natural history collections, with over 100,000 bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian, plant, insect, and geological specimens located on the University of Puget Sound campus. These specimens serve as an invaluable resource to science & conservation, but to ensure their protection and longevity, they are often stored away in collections cabinets behind closed doors. In an attempt to bring collections to the public, the Puget Sound Museum has worked to give artists access to these specimens in the hopes that the specimen stories can be told through art. The Hidden Specimen features the work of over a dozen local artists and UPS students who were inspired by the Puget Sound Museum collections to create specimen-based works of art and, in turn, provide broader access to our research collections through visuals.
April 17 - May 5