Super Natural

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.
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Flights and Frights of Fancy

Posted: September 8, 2015
Category: Super Natural
With over one thousand unique works, NMWA has one of the nation’s most extensive collections of artists’ books. Selections are always on display in the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and...
An open book full of birds made of paper, flying out of the book.

Merian’s Daughters: Monika E. de Vries Gohlke, Amy Lamb, and Janaina Tschäpe

Posted: September 1, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Three artists credit groundbreaking 17th-century artist and scientist Maria Sibylla Merian, whose work is also on view in Super Natural, as a major influence on their performances, photography, videos, and...
Close-up photograph shows a trumpet-shaped flower against a dark black background. The flower's striated, long neck erupts in a profusion of purple and white petals that dominate the composition.

5 Fast Facts: Sharon Core

Posted: August 26, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Impress your friends with five fast facts about Sharon Core, whose work is currently on view at NMWA in the collection galleries and in Super Natural.
A full crystal sherry glass and plate mounded with raisins and iced cakes occupy the middle ground of a still-life photograph. Luscious green grapes sit in the left foreground, and greenery rises in the background. The image explicitly imitates18th-century, still-life paintings.

5 Fast Facts: Patricia Piccinini

Posted: August 19, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Learn more about artist Patricia Piccinini, who is known for The Stags and whose work is featured in the NMWA collection.
A sculpture consists of two metallic-orange motor scooters manipulated to resemble male deer. Leather seats become haunches, dashboard dials resemble faces, and multiple rear-view mirrors morph into antlers. The serpentine, hybrid animal-machines appear to spar for dominance.

Caution: Beware the Boundaries of Beasties

Posted: July 29, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Patricia Piccinini’s The Stags is currently on view in NMWA’s summer exhibition Super Natural. In sleek and shimmering fiberglass, the two large sculptural pieces of The Stags combine characteristics of...
A sculpture consists of two metallic-orange motor scooters manipulated to resemble male deer. Leather seats become haunches, dashboard dials resemble faces, and multiple rear-view mirrors morph into antlers. The serpentine, hybrid animal-machines appear to spar for dominance.

5 Fast Facts: Elisabetta Gut

Posted: July 8, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Impress your friends with five fast facts about Elisabetta Gut, whose work is currently on view in NMWA’s galleries.
A brown, tropical fruit with a large segment of skin removed to reveal small, round pages of sheet music inside instead of fruit flesh. The book rests on a square woodblock with “libra—seme” printed in the bottom-right corner.

Flowers, Fruit, and Fatality

Posted: June 17, 2015
Category: Super Natural
“What is natural?” is the intriguing question surrounding Super Natural. Two of the exhibition’s artists, Rachel Ruysch and Sam Taylor-Johnson, answer this query through their respective works of art.
A still life painting featuring an asymmetrical arrangement of flowers; the central section features pink, orange, yellow, and blue flowers and is dramatically highlighted compared to the background and outer edge of arrangement.

Women with Wanderlust

Posted: June 10, 2015
Category: Super Natural
During the press preview for Super Natural, NMWA Chief Curator Kathryn Wat stressed one fact above all others about featured artist Maria Sibylla Merian: this woman was radical. Not only...
A detailed engraving portrays a large, black and tan lizard with a white belly in precise detail. Facing right and positioned over a green surface and a hatching egg, the reptile bites a long, red and black snake attacking another egg and curling around the lizard's tail.

5 Fast Facts: Rachel Ruysch

Posted: June 2, 2015
Category: Super Natural
Impress your friends with five fast facts about Rachel Ruysch, whose work will be on view at NMWA in Super Natural, June 5–September 13, 2015.
A still life painting featuring an asymmetrical arrangement of flowers; the central section features pink, orange, yellow, and blue flowers and is dramatically highlighted compared to the background and outer edge of arrangement.

Uncommon Ground: Summer Exhibitions at NMWA

Posted: May 15, 2015
Category: Super Natural
What is natural? Porcelain grass lawns and anthropomorphic scooters may not be the first objects to come to mind, although they are likely to make a lasting impression. Visitors can...
Detail photograph of ceramic sculpture made to look like a patch of lawn. Individual squares consisting of multiple upright blades of porcelain grass, glazed green, fit together to form a lush rectangular field of grass.