From 18 Could to 2 November 2025, the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington, presents the exhibition “Little Beasts: Artwork, Marvel, and the Pure World”.
Supply: Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington · Picture: Jan van Kessel the Elder, “Bugs and a Sprig of Rosemary”, 1653
Because of an unprecedented collaboration with the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past (NMNH), the Nationwide Gallery will show almost 75 prints, drawings, and work alongside some 60 objects from NMNH, marking the primary time their collections of artwork and specimens have been displayed collectively. A brand new movie by up to date artist Dario Robleto will additional study the intersection of artwork, science, and the pure world, bringing historical past into dialogue with up to date tradition. The exhibition shall be on view from Could 18 to November 2, 2025, within the Nationwide Gallery’s West Constructing.
Little Beasts will discover how European artists unfold information about creatures massive and small throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scientific expertise, commerce, and colonial growth led to the examine of beforehand unknown or neglected species. In main cities like Antwerp, artists resembling Joris and Jacob Hoefnagel and Jan van Kessel created extremely detailed drawings, prints, and work of those bugs, animals, and different beestjes, or “little beasts” in Dutch. Their works impressed generations of artists and naturalists, fueling the burgeoning science of pure historical past. Hardly ever displayed artwork by greater than a dozen others, together with Albrecht Dürer, Teodoro Filippo di Liagno, and Wenceslaus Hollar, may also be on view alongside examples of the interval’s illustrated zoological publications.
The Nationwide Gallery will supply a number of alternatives all through the exhibition for guests to deepen their engagement with the fabric. Digital shows will permit guests to zoom in on small works and study extra about their tales. Magnifying glasses, harking back to the lenses Renaissance artists and naturalists would have used, shall be obtainable to look at specimens and their inventive representations. Take-home nature journals will invite guests to decelerate and observe the pure world, each throughout the exhibition and past.
