Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750–1900

Heinz Galleries Mar. 26–Aug. 27, 2006

Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750–1900 reveals how scientific discoveries, exploration, and new ideas during the Industrial Age affected the way artists in Europe and America thought about and depicted animals. Through paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, illustrated books, scientific specimens, and decorative arts objects, Fierce Friends explores the ways artists derived inspiration from science, natural history, and literature about animals, and also inspired and influenced these fields.

Despite the crucial role animals have played throughout human history, and despite the symbolic resonance of animals in human imagination, animal art has been a dormant subject in the art historical canon, particularly in museum exhibitions. Fierce Friends is the first serious, full-scale examination of the subject of animals in art, and it was the first to incorporate scientific materials and concepts.

Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750–1900 was curated by Andreas Blühm, formerly of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and Lulu Lippincott, Carnegie Museum of Art.

Exhibition Images

Support

Major support for the Pittsburgh presentation of Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750–1900 has been provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation. This exhibition was financed in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Community and Economic Development. Additional support has been provided by the Henry L. Hillman Fund, The Fellows and The Associates of Carnegie Museum of Art, the Scaife Family Foundation, the Beal Publication Fund, and the Scaife Family Foundation Fund for Children’s Publications.

Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals: 1750–1900 is co-organized with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

General support for the museum’s exhibition program is provided by The Heinz Endowments, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Allegheny Regional Asset District.