This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
The exhibit is one of many events this year marking Darwin’s birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his work On the Origin of Species. Darwin studied pigeons and the long records of pigeon breeders, bred pigeons himself, and visited pigeon clubs while formulating his theory on natural selection. Lafayette’s exhibit coincides with a joint exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum in Shropshire, England, Darwin’s birthplace.
An artist talk will begin 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6, with a reception following from 4-6 p.m. A guided tour of the exhibition will take place 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22. Presented in conjunction with the exhibit will be the talk “Darwin’s Sexual Selection and the Jealous Male in Fin de Siecle Art” by art historian Barbra Larson at 4:10 p.m., Nov. 12, in Williams Center room 108. The essay “Brandon Ballengée: Art/Science/Activism,” by Robert S. Mattison, Metzgar Professor and head of art, will appear in an illustrated catalogue produced by the Shrewsbury Museum.
The two exhibits feature 39 pieces by Ballengée, whose work combines biology and art. The prints are from his A Habit of Deciding Influence series, and are made from photographs of Darwin’s pigeon research specimens. The photographs were printed by art major Sydney Peyser ’10 (Livingston, N.J.) and Lew Minter, director of the art department media lab, 18 of which will be on display at Lafayette and the rest at Shewsbury.
Lafayette’s exhibition also includes Ballengée’s Frameworks of Absence: The Extinct Birds of John James Audubon and Coop.
Frameworks of Absence focuses on 10 prints from naturalist painter John James Audubon’s Birds of America volumes. To illustrate the loss of certain species, Ballengée cut out images of birds now extinct or declining, including the passenger pigeon, Great Auk, and the Piping Plover, from original Audubon prints, leaving voids.
Coop is a multimedia sculptural installation inspired by Darwin’s five-sided pigeon coop. Through five video monitor “windows,” visitors can view images of the 21 prints in Shrewbury. Chemical engineering major Ankit Chandra ’12 (Gaborone, Botswana), civil engineering major Lori Gonzalez ’10, and Casey Schmalacker ’12 (Great Neck, N.Y.) assembled the presentations for the windows.
The Williams Center Art Gallery is located in the Morris R. Williams Center for the Arts on the corner of Hamilton and High streets. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday 11a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday noon-5 p.m., and 7:30-9 p.m. on the evenings of public performances in the Williams Center. For more information, contact Michiko Okaya, director of Lafayette art galleries, at (610) 330-5361.
The Lafayette College art galleries are funded in part through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.