This Summer, Go On an Art Safari in RAM's Menagerie

Open through October 21, 2012 Animal Magnetism: Sculpture from RAM's Collection highlights selected artworks from the Racine Art Museum's permanent craft collection that respond to the wonder, mystery, and presence of the natural world by incorporating animals into their artistic explorations as subject, pattern, decoration, and symbol.  

Michael Lucero, Chihuahua in a Teacup Teapot (New World Series), 1993, Glazed white earthenware, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Linda Brooks Sullivan, Photography: Michael Tropea

Animals have long been utilized as "characters" in cultural stories, myths, and visual imagery. Museums are often full of objects and images that incorporate animals-on the periphery of human-focused stories, as primary characters, as compositional elements in pattern and design, and to provide material elements (e.g. leather, bone, feather, and fish skin). Whether acting as symbols for ideas or human personality types, or representing the animal kingdom more directly, animals play important roles in our social fabric as well as our everyday lives.

Presenting 75 works of clay, glass, polymer, and metal from 57 artists, this exhibition features primarily three-dimensional works that reference or incorporate animals. A companion exhibition at RAM's Wustum Museum (now through August 25) includes mainly two-dimensional works that use animals as subject matter. Both exhibitions, drawn from RAM's collection, highlight a diversity of materials and a variety in approaches to one topic.

Museum Menagerie at RAM

This summer, the Racine Art Museum features an exciting array of exhibitions and programming that focus on animals and their relationship with humans. Museum Menagerie at RAM highlights a collection of creatures by contemporary artists, safely held captive for all to view. RAM hosts Beth Van Hoesen: The Observant Eye from May 20 through September 9, 2012. Van Hoesen is known for her realistic images of animals, floral studies, figure drawings, and portraits. Her animal prints are particularly engaging.

RAM also hosts Animal Nature, an exhibition that addresses the complex relationship between humans and animals with work that is witty, insightful, and poignant. Whether using jewelry, cut paper, blown glass, or other materials, these contemporary artists create engaging works that reflect on both animal and human nature. Artists whose works are featured in Animal Nature include: Susan Aaron-Taylor, Eunmi Chun, Teresa Faris, D.R. Harper, Ron Layport, Anne Lemanski, Carmen Lozar, Manya and Roumen, Kyoko Okubo, Miel-Margarita Paredes, Linda Kindler Priest, Tom Rauschke and Karen Wiiken, Michael Velliquette, and Betsy Youngquist and R. Scott Long.