Art, Science, & Technology at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center: Zoology

To anticipate the opening of Vassar's new Science Center in Spring 2016, the Art Center presented a series of installations that celebrate the rich and complex relationship of art, science, and technology. Each segment of the series, comprised of approximately a dozen works from the permanent collection, focused on a related theme. During the Renaissance, artists advanced the field of natural history by depicting animals studied from life. In the sixteenth century, illustrations of animals based on firsthand observation began to be incorporated into natural history texts. In Europe and the United states, the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries proved a dynamic yet fraught time for study of the natural world. Zoos grew in popularity into the mid 1800s, exposing the public's fascination with, and impulse to tame, wild animals. Artists maintained this tradition in the twentieth century.