We live in Nebraska where after a few minutes’ drive into the country we can see various kinds of livestock and farm animals or if you are lucky some wildlife—coyote, skunk, deer, fish, and birds. Living in town there are the ubiquitous squirrels and song birds along with household furred, finned, and feathered companions. We have a slightly uneasy relationship with animals—some we view as members of the family while others are consumed for dinner.  The artists who portrayed animals in the 20th century often downplayed the latter human animal relationship and featured the former as in the warm images of household pets in Margery Ryerson’s prints of young girls with a dog. Or artists depicted animals as stolid farm beasts such as in the prints by Edmund Blampied, Douglas Hall, Joseph Hirsch, and Nebraska Regionalist, Aaron Gunn Pyle. Several artists in this exhibition—Leonard Baskin, Joseph Knap, and Frank Benson—celebrate wild animals and birds.

These and other artists’ prints of animals will be on exhibit in the Historical Gallery at the LUX Center for the Arts. Wild and Tame may be seen from September 7, 2017 to January 3, 2018.

-Susan Soriente, Curator of the Gladys Lux Print and Historical Collections.