From 18 Could to 2 November 2025, the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington, presents the exhibition “Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World”.
Supply: Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington · Picture: Jan van Kessel the Elder, “Insects 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 practically 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 modern artist Dario Robleto will additional study the intersection of artwork, science, and the pure world, bringing historical past into dialogue with modern tradition. The exhibition will probably 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 data about creatures massive and small in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scientific know-how, commerce, and colonial growth led to the research of beforehand unknown or missed species. In main cities like Antwerp, artists similar to 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, will even be on view alongside examples of the interval’s illustrated zoological publications.
The Nationwide Gallery will provide a number of alternatives all through the exhibition for guests to deepen their engagement with the fabric. Digital shows will enable guests to zoom in on small works and be taught extra about their tales. Magnifying glasses, paying homage to the lenses Renaissance artists and naturalists would have used, will probably be out there to look at specimens and their creative representations. Take-home nature journals will invite guests to decelerate and observe the pure world, each inside the exhibition and past.
