Rosamund Purcell
Friends of the Library, Bryn Mawr College
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Place: Carpenter Library 21, Bryn Mawr College
Information: 610-526-6576 or SpecColl@brynmawr.edu.
Rosamond Purcell’s extraordinary photographs and installations of natural history specimens have been featured in numerous books and exhibitions that explore the interaction of art and science. Her work includes three books done in collaboration with the late Stephen Jay Gould, and an exhibition, "Two Rooms," which featured a reconstruction of a 17th-century cabinet of curiosities. Her most recent book is Egg and Nest (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Some reoccurring themes in Purcell’s work include the drive to collect and classify, the decay of objects and beings, and the fluid boundaries between art and science. Her work has ranged from examining natural history collections, photographing disintegrating game dice in Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck with Ricky Jay (Quantuck Lane, 2002), exploring a junkyard belonging to an eccentric antiques dealer for Owls Head (Quantuck Lane, 2003), and recreating the cabinet of curiosities of the 17th-century Danish scholar Ole Worm. Running throughout these works is the artist’s interest in personal and scientific collections, and the choices of display and categorization which are manifested in them.
The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has written, “Rosamond Purcell is one of the great photographers. She has captured the history of objects by photographing them in romantic decline – books scourged by worms, petrified food-stuffs, biological specimens gone wrong, the inexorable entropic winding down of everything.”
Following the lecture there will be a reception and viewing of the exhibition "Darwin's Ancestors: Tracing the Origins of the 'Origin of Species' " in the Rare Book Room of Canaday Library.
The lecture and exhibition are sponsored by the Friends of the Library. The exhibition is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in the Rare Book Room in Canaday Library, through February.