Natural History brings together a wide range of contemporary art from the museum’s permanent collection to explore artists’ engagement with nature, landscape, and the built environment. Including painting, sculpture, photography, and video works, Natural History offers a non-traditional and playful presentation of relevant themes running through contemporary art and directly engages with our neighbor, Carnegie Museum of Natural History. 

 

Collectively, the artists in the exhibition explore the ways in which humans understand and visualize our natural environment; the social and cultural meanings embedded in the tradition of landscape photography and painting; the use of natural motifs for formal experimentation; environmentalism; and the legacy of Romanticism, as it pertains to nature and the sublime. Artists include Mel Bochner, Vija Celmins, John Divola, Fischli & Weiss, Llyn Foulkes, Rachel Harrison, Richard Hughes, Laura Owens, Ed Ruscha, Hiroshi Sugito, Paul Thek, and James Welling.