This campus exhibition of works created by the students in the Fall 2015 course, VAST 199, "Drawn to Nature" was inspired by the collection cases in O'Neil Hall that contained taxidermy and specimens, and by the work of artist Mark Dion. It integrates and playfully converses work from the class with the existing scientific specimens. Like the Wunderkammen, a European-Renaissance cabinet of curiosities that pre-dated the modern natural history museum, fact and fiction are muddled in service of theatricality, and many of the works in the cabinets, such as the large pseudo-scientific comparative anatomy posters are fictional specimens executed in the manner of scientific textbook illustration, in order to evoke authenticity. Students in the class also "curated" the existing specimen collection by re-arranging objects to create visual relationships with their works of art. Professors Robert Bellin, Kelly Wolfe-Bellin, and Leon Claessens also contributed several specimens and objects from their labs to the display. The final project for the course was an independent work that addressed the theme of the human impact on the environment, and many of those works were hung on the walls near the displays.
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