Compensation for Loss Exhibition

Anna Fine Foer’s carefully researched and meticulously crafted works re-imagine the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities for the present. These cabinets were a precursor to the museum, where collectors displayed natural specimens, often from far-off locales, to advance scientific study and to impress visitors with their erudition and wealth.

The series Compensation for Loss comments upon historic and contemporary scientific inquiry into biological and mineral realms. Just as today we look back on the Renaissance collections and consider them naive understandings of the natural world, our present-day assembly of genetic code to understand living cells may seem primitive when viewed 100 years from now.

Artists explain the world around us and anticipate the future. We are growing human body parts and robots are taking over work formerly carried out by humans.  There are sophisticated prosthetics with computerized and digital elements. We are rapidly losing species due to human encroachment and climate change.  Pandemics loom.

Anna combines traditional collage, digital media, and painting as she explores the pressing issues of loss, adaptation, and survival in the natural world.  These images recombine parts of extinct or endangered species with other animals and the geological record to reimagine their survivability. Images of human inventions and industry are included to strengthen or fill in missing pieces and thus compensate for loss. Some of the collages presented here illustrate events from Peale family history and this building; the first purpose built museum in the New World, with its own cabinets of wonder. Mastodon’s Natural History references the mastodon displayed here in 1814, excavated by Charles Wilson Peale in Newburgh New York in 1801.  Titian Peale (Charles Willson Peale’s son) who was a naturalist, discovered a fake specimen in an Audubon illustration; the inspiration for Titian Peale’s Reveal.

Financial support was provided by Tree of Life Artist Grant, the Puffin Foundation and Maryland State Arts Council.