Authors
Student curators
Emily Roush '21
Shannon Zeltmann '21
Faculty direction
Prof. Felicia Else
Prof. Kay Etheridge
Shannon Egan, Director of Schmucker Art Gallery
Files
Download Full Text (3.4 MB)
Document Type
Art Catalog
Description
The exhibition Artful Nature and the Legacy of Maria Sibylla Merian celebrates the skills and influences of a remarkable woman from seventeenth-century Europe. Curated by Emily Roush ’21 and Shannon Zeltmann ’21 with the guidance of Professors Kay Etheridge (Biology) and Felicia Else (Art History), Emily and Shannon selected the prints, organized them into categories, and carried out research on them, much of which was relatively obscure and would have been challenging even for graduate students.
Maria Sibylla Merian lived and worked in a time of vibrant intersections of art and science in Europe. Her images of insects and plants are at the center of the exhibition, but it is important to understand how her work was shaped by this period. What may at first glance appear to be “pretty” pictures of flowers and bugs were actually revolutionary compositions that changed how nature was portrayed.
Publication Date
Fall 2019
Publisher
Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
City
Gettysburg, PA
Keywords
Gettysburg College, Art, Science, Biology, Symbolic Nature, Butterflies, Ecological Illustrations
Recommended Citation
Roush, Emily N.; Zeltmann, Shannon R.; Else, Felicia M.; Etheridge, Kay; and Egan, Shannon, "Artful Nature and the Legacy of Maria Sibylla Merian" (2019). Schmucker Art Catalogs. 32.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/32
Included in
Art Practice Commons, Biodiversity Commons, Biology Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons
Comments
Artful Nature and the Legacy of Maria Sibylla Merian was on exhibition at the Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College September 4th - November 12th, 2019.
To learn more, visit the exhibit website.