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Bowdoin College Museum of Art announces William Wegman. Hello Nature

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art presents William Wegman. Hello Nature, an exhibition on view from July 13 through October 21, 2012, will feature over 100 works in a variety of media including photography, video, painting, and drawing—all of which were produced in or inspired by the state of Maine. Taken together, this body of work attests to Wegman’s rigorous and sustained engagement with the natural world and places the artist squarely within the American landscape tradition.


William Wegman Windmill, 1989, chromogenic print. Courtesy William Wegman Studio

Among the highlights of the exhibition are Wegman’s postcard paintings, canvases that use vintage postcards as their starting points, physically incorporating multiple images into fantastic tableaus. In addition to Wegman’s well-known Weimaraners, William Wegman: Hello Nature also features compilations of collages, drawings, excerpts from the artist’s illustrated nature books, and prose that evokes both nineteenth-century transcendentalist literature and the whimsical outdoor recreation guides that Wegman first encountered as a child. Drawn largely from the artist’s rarely-seen personal collection, William Wegman: Hello Nature presents a uniquely autobiographical approach to Wegman’s work.

Raised in rural Massachusetts, Wegman has long been influenced by the landscape of New England, spending his summers in the Rangeley Lakes Region of Maine for the last three decades. A follow-up to the Museum’s 2011 exhibition Edward Hopper’s Maine, this summer’s William Wegman: Hello Nature will once again examine the Maine landscape as inspiration, this time arguing its significance for an artist not commonly associated with Maine. This ongoing series of summer exhibitions is a fundamental part of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s mission—conceiving exhibitions with popular and scholarly appeal in order to serve audiences both regionally and nationally.

“William Wegman: Hello Nature is the first exhibition to emphasize the connection to nature that runs through Wegman’s lengthy career—not just in his famed photographs of his Weimaraner dogs but across a wide range of media,” said the exhibition’s co-curator Kevin Salatino. “The exhibition brings critical focus to this often-overlooked aspect of Wegman’s oeuvre, highlighting the artist’s ongoing exploration of nature’s place in the cultural imagination.”

Visit Wegman’s site at www.wegmanworld.com

Bowdoin College Museum of Art
9400 College Station
Brunswick ME 04011
207-725-3275
[email protected]
www.bowdoin.edu

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