Press Release

Contemporary Prints Inspired by Science and Nature on View in Library Exhibition Starting September 18

One of Five Concurrent Exhibitions on Scientific and Medical Imagery

DNA molecules, birds, ants, eyes, and vegetables are among the elements of science and nature that have inspired a diverse group of contemporary art works on view in Sight/Insight: Visual Commen-taries on the Physical World, an exhibition at The New York Public Library. Although unified in their relation to the physical world, the images range from explorations of the delicate beauty of a swan feather to very personal, sometimes jarring examinations of psyche, sexuality, gender, and disease. The exhibition features prints and illustrated books by more than forty artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Christine Dixie, Carroll Dunham, Paul Etienne Lincoln, and Frank Moore. Sight/Insight: Visual Commentaries on the Physical World runs from September 18, 1999 through January 8, 2000 in the third floor Print Gallery at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free.

The exhibit is one of four related to scientific and medical imagery on view this fall at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library; another related exhibition is on view at the Science, Industry and Business Library.

The materials in Sight/Insight are drawn from the Print Collection of the Library's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs and from the Library's Spencer Collection. The curator is Roberta Waddell, who is also curator of the Library's Print Collection. "All of these artists invite us to consider their interpretations of the visible world, and several of them also remind us that perception itself is highly subjective and personal," Waddell said. "It is this implicit subjectivity and ambiguity that allow us through art to gain access to an enlightening variety of visions and insights."

This relativity of perception is reflected, for example, in works by artist Phil Sims and writer Gregory Whitehead, in which ricocheting line patterns printed in drypoint are paired with humorous, satiric captions written as mock medical diagnoses. Richard Deacon evinces a duality in his anthropomorphic figures based on a series of vegetable photographs he remembered from his youth. In one, a lumpy potato figure is hunched over like an elderly man or woman with a walking stick. Marc Quinn represents a transparent, reassembled human form represented in overlapping blue and red frames, ornamented with the artist's inky thumbprints. Other artists with works included in the show are Kiki Smith, Aleksandar Duravcevic, Mark Francis, and Adele Henderson.

The prints on view represent a wide range of traditional and recent printmaking techniques. Produced in collaboration with some of today's leading art publishers and printers, the pieces have been rendered through a variety of means such as soft-ground etching, drypoint, screen printing, spit-bite etching, linocut, and digital printing.

The other science-themed exhibitions on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library this fall are Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration (October 23, 1999 to February 19, 2000), Berenice Abbott: Science Photographs (October 2, 1999 to January 8, 2000), and Adventures in Science and Exploration: Drawings by Charles Addams (September 10, 1999 to January 29, 2000).  Another related exhibition, at the Science, Industry and Business Library at 188 Madison Avenue, is Earth from Above: An Aerial Portrait on the Eve of the Year 2000 (October 26, 1999 to January 29, 2000).

The Print Collection
The New York Public Library's Print Collection, part of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, encompasses approximately 180,000 original prints: engravings, etchings, lithographs, relief prints, and screen prints, as well as a specialized reference collection of more than 15,000 volumes on the history of prints and printmaking.

Of special note are the rich holdings of American historical prints, including the I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection and the Eno Collection of New York City views, along with a significant survey of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and European political cartoons and caricatures. Equally outstanding is the collection of nineteenth-century French and American prints, in particular the gift of S. P. Avery, who acquired often rare and special impressions by his contemporaries, such as Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as examples from the early history of lithography. Strong collections of early twentieth-century prints and the continuing acquisition of contemporary prints bring the holdings to the present.

This exhibition has been made possible through the continuing generosity of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

The Library's Public Education Program will present a series of six illustrated lectures in which scholars explore the history and future of representing scientific and medical concepts. For ticket information on the lecture series, call 212-930-0571.

Sight/Insight: Visual Commentaries on the Physical World is on view from September 18, 1999 to January 8, 2000 in the third floor Print Gallery at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.  Exhibition hours are Monday, Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. ­ 6 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. ­ 7:30 p.m.; closed Sundays and national holidays. For recorded information about exhibitions at The New York Public Library, the public may call 212-869-8089, or visit the Library's website at www.nypl.org.

Please call 212-221-7676 for illustrations/images.
 

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