Framing Nature: the Living World in Art takes a dynamic view of the artistic engagement with nature across cultures. The exhibition offers challenging and enriching perspectives on how we see and understand the natural world through the eyes of artists and makers from around the globe. This exhibition includes more than 100 drawings, prints, paintings, photographs and sculptures drawn from the Harn’s main collecting areas of modern, contemporary, African and Asian art, and photography, as well as the collections of Oceanic art, Ancient American art, and Prints and Drawings before 1850. The exhibition also draws on the rich collections of the University Florida, with loans from the George A. Smathers Libraries and the Florida Museum of Natural History. The exhibition and related programs encourage new ways of thinking about the encounter between art and nature, the ideas embodied in that encounter and the knowledge produced by it.
Framing Nature will be organized along four thematic groupings:
- Inspiration considers how artists have explored, interpreted and reinterpreted nature in their work. Featured artists in this grouping include Herman Herzog, William Henry Jackson, Evon Streetman, Toshiko Takaezu and Edward Weston.
- Discovery addresses how humans have made sense of the world through observation and documentation. A sample of artists in the exhibition who have contributed to the dissemination of this knowledge through their art includes Elizabeth Blackwell, Paul Jacoulet, Bisrat Shibabaw, Carleton E. Watkins and Ellis Wilson.
- Power features artistic expressions reflecting the symbolic powers vested in nature by the human mind. A highlight of artists in this grouping includes Berenice Abbot, Skunder Boghossian, Rockwell Kent, Sebastião Salgado and Massimo Vitali.
- Refuge depicts the impulse to escape into nature as well as the experience of living in close harmony with the living world. A sampling of artists in this section include John James Audubon, Milton Avery, Jamini Roy, Maggie Taylor and Jerry Uelsmann.
This exhibition is made possible by the UF Office of the Provost with additional support from an anonymous donor, Robert and Carolyn Thoburn, the John V. and Patricia M. Carlson Program Endowment, the Alachua County Visitors and Convention Bureau, Visit Florida, and the Harn General Program Endowment.
