Gallery Talk | 'Flora et Fauna: Nature in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Culture'

Professor Jim Higginbotham, Associate Professor of Classics on the Henry Johnson Professorship Fund and Associate Curator for the Ancient Collection and curator of the new exhibition, Flora et Fauna: Nature in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Culture, will lead a tour and share insights into this unique display of the museum's collection.

The exhibition features works from the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art spanning nearly two thousand years and examines how ancient Mediterranean societies understood and depicted the natural world. Illustrations of nature and local environments came to define the identities of many cultures, serving as symbols, decorative designs, and stand-ins for gods. Nature also inspired the imagination to create exotic animals and plants that became part of ancient mythologies. This exhibition explores how flora and fauna sustained societies and were passed both literally, through cultivated plants, pets, and livestock, and figuratively, through the development of pictorial imagery, from one culture to another.

Free and open to the public; no registration required. Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Bowdoin College is committed to providing an accessible and welcoming environment. Please contact the Events Office (events@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3433) with any questions regarding the accessibility of this event and/or to request accommodations. Please note: some accommodations require advance notice and may require documentation of a disabling condition.

Image: Red-Figure Fish Plate, Attributed to the “Perrone-Phrixos” group, Apulian, ca. 360–320 BCE,  clay, Museum Purchase, Adela Wood Smith Trust.

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