Circle of Animals
May 9, 2015 - January 3, 2016
Internationally acclaimed Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei has reinterpreted the 12 bronze animal heads representing the traditional Chinese zodiac animals that once adorned the famed fountain-clock of the Yuanming Yuan, an imperial retreat in Beijing. The National Museum of Wildlife Art is honored to be bringing Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac Head World Tour to Wyoming after exhibitions in Mexico City, Chicago, London, Toronto, New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.
Designed in the 18th century by two European Jesuit priests serving in the court of the Qing-dynasty Emperor Qianlong, the 12 Chinese zodiac animals originally functioned as parts of a water clock-fountain sited in the magnificent, European-style gardens of the Yuanming Yuan. In 1860, the Yuanming Yuan was ransacked by French and British troops, and the heads were pillaged. In reinterpreting these objects on an oversize scale, Ai Weiwei focuses attention on questions of looting and repatriation, while extending his ongoing exploration of the “fake” and the copy in relation to the original.
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Out of the Shadows: Prints from the Permanent Collection
Through April 27, 2025Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Picasso, Warhol—while many of the works in this show may be small in size, they are created by some of the biggest names in the canon of art history.
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Tony Foster: Watercolour Diaries from the Green River
Through May 4, 2025Artist Tony Foster became fascinated with the 50-million-year-old Green River fossilized fish when he first saw them in 1985. It was from these small special objects that he comprised the idea to make a group of artworks about the Green River. He began his project in 2018, creating a major painting of Steamboat Rock and the horseshoe bend from his vantage point up a 400 foot cliff. In the summer of 2019 he took a rafting trip from the Gates of Lodore to Split Rock, creating five smaller paintings en route. From these initial works he created this exhibition about, in Foster’s words: “this magnificent river.”
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