Museum Menagerie

The animal kingdom provides us with endless fascination, wonder, and joy—as well as artistic inspiration. This exhibition plays with the idea of a menagerie, a place where live animals are kept for study and display.

The objects in our Museum Menagerie offer a portrait of the wild and tame, familiar and exotic, peaceful and ferocious, as seen in works of art spanning more than two centuries. They remind us of our relationships with living creatures as symbols of our human stories, as companions, and as reflections of ourselves.

After you meet the animals in this menagerie, look around the museum for more. You’ll find them everywhere, in arts from ancient Egypt and Asia to European and American painting and sculpture.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.