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The Chazen Museum is an excellent place to escape the elements this winter. The main exhibition spaces contain two wonderful shows at the moment, one of drawings and paintings by Japanese artists Ikeda Manabu and Tenmyouya Hisashi (through Feb. 16), and the other of kimono sculptures by Karen LaMonte (through Jan. 12). But don't neglect smaller spaces such as the Mayer Gallery, where Capturing Nature: Instruments, Specimens, Art is on display through April 13. Part of an ongoing conversation within the UW's Science History Detectives group, this is a thought-provoking presentation of conventional art forms that address environmental concerns and pieces one would normally find in a natural history museum.
Capturing Nature's works come from several UW sources, including the Zoological Museum, the Ingersoll Physics Museum and the Physics Lecture Demonstration Collection. Intelligently curated, the show is divided into sections that highlight the tension among several human desires: controlling and manipulating the natural world, admiring its beauty, and fearing its dangers. One of the most intriguing works is Night #2, a 2005 sculpture by Kim Cridler. Though this piece is shaped like a vase, it's also a cage for about 40 ceramic birds. Perched on the work's steel bars, each creature stares out at viewers, as if begging for release. With glossy turquoise wings and ivory-colored bellies, the birds are beautiful to look at. But viewing them isn't so pleasant when you realize they've been forced into the roles of specimen and art object.
Birds also play a large role in the show's discussion of animal preservation. Many creatures immigrants tried to bring to America died in transit, and some species disappeared altogether. To keep their favorite animals from being lost, many 19th-century artists immortalized them through paintings and taxidermy. A gorgeous snowy owl sits in the foreground of Nyctea nivea, a hand-colored lithograph from English painter John Gould's Birds of Great Britain series. The bird gazes over the viewer's shoulder, its golden eyes wearing an expression that's both majestic and predatory. The predator-prey theme is echoed in the background, where two more owls watch a polar bear devour a seal. Nearby, Songbird Tree features stuffed specimens of more than a dozen native birds, including a goldfinch and an oriole. Though it might give some modern viewers the creeps, this type of display was considered tasteful -- and often intensely meaningful -- among the Victorian middle class.
I was also drawn to a large, horned object described as a unicorn skull. Research scientist and UW alum W. Franklin Dove transplanted cells that typically produce two horns onto a cattle skull in the early 1930s. Though he must have been eager to engineer a fantastical creature, he wanted to prove that horns don't sprout directly from the skull. As he'd hypothesized, a single horn grew atop the bull's head. Though animal experimentation is a much more contentious issue today, Dove's work remains an important example of early stem-cell research.