September 7, 2024 – February 23, 2025
In 2001, Midwest artist Nancy Hild (1948–2017) exhibited three larger-than-life canvases at the Chicago Cultural Center. Their installation was unusual. Rather than the typical museum or gallery wall, the three paintings instead hung in a structure-within-a-structure, a small-scale mausoleum and temple custom built for them. The structure, as well as the paintings’ avian subjects, provided the inspiration for the exhibition’s title: The Bird Room. The paintings housed inside the structure reproduced taxidermy displays from the nearby Field Museum. Placed in situ, the three paintings became an immersive experience and an invitation into a complex conversation around the animal domain and sacred spaces. The Bird Room Redux redisplays the three original paintings, now in the Woodson’s collection, and reproduces their historic display. The exhibition invites you to experience the “feeling of being overwhelmed…by a muted sense of wonder,” as one critic described of the original installation.
Thanks to the members, donors, grantors, and sponsors who support exhibitions and programs.
Exhibitions and programs are supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. Marketing is supported in part by City of Wausau Room Tax funds.
