Past Exhibitions

April 9, 2019 – February 16, 2020
While an avian theme unites artworks created between 1875 and 2018, the mediums and points of view will surprise and delight.

September 7 through December 1, 2019

Imaginations take flight, inspired by new breathtaking depictions of birds by some of the world’s most talented artists who push themselves to new heights, striving to be selected for the internationally renowned Birds in Art exhibition. Majestic yet fragile, amusing, and poignant, birds connect us with the natural world, heralding each dawn and signaling environmental shifts. Savor artistic interpretations and discover anew what inspires you. The Museum’s 2019 Master Artist is British colored-pencil artist Alan Woollett. The 44th annual exhibition features avian wonders through all-new interpretations in original paintings, sculptures, and graphics created within the last three years. Each fall, Birds in Art opening weekend festivities are part of Wausau’s Artrageous Weekend.

This online-only exhibition, featuring a selection of artwork from the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum collection, arose from an International Crane Foundation “From the Field Series” webinar. The conversation during this “Cranes and Artists: A Creative Dance” webinar on June 18, 2020, featured Lizzie Condon, ICF Whooping Crane Outreach Coordinator, and the Museum’s director Kathy Kelsey Foley and museum educator Catie Anderson and images of these artworks.

June 8 – August 25, 2019

From saguaro cactus of the Southwest, big-leaf maple of the West Coast, and bloodroot spanning the Midwest to bottlebrush buckeye of the Eastern Seaboard, this exhibition features artworks of America’s native plants. Familiar plants such as sunflowers and violets and rare species such as lady’s slipper orchids are highlighted in watercolors and other mediums. Curated by the American Society of Botanical Artists and the United States Botanic Garden, Botanical Art Worldwide: America’s Flora is part of a worldwide project in which national exhibitions are simultaneously on view at cultural institutions in twenty-five countries on six continents. Each exhibition features contemporary artwork of native plants by resident artists via a coordinated, international effort to increase appreciation of the world’s plant diversity and to link people with plants via botanical art.

June 8 – August 25, 2019

Kandis Vermeer Phillips’ illuminated alphabet showcases A to Z intertwined with plants, mammals, and insects. Phillips integrated extensive research into the history of and the natural materials used in medieval illuminated manuscripts into an alphabet primer for her granddaughter, combining decorative letters with representations of flowers and creatures found in her garden or during family travels. This exhibition was organized by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

On view September 4, 2018 through August 18, 2019

Discover the beauty of shorebirds – sanderlings, stilts, turnstones, whimbrels, yellowlegs, and others – through sculptures and works on paper from the Woodson Art Museum’s collection.

On view September 4, 2018 through August 11, 2019

Regal Bearing applies the tenets of portraiture to more than sixty artworks from the Museum’s collection. As with human portraits, the artists represented captured the essence of their subjects using a variety of formats, including a focus on single birds without backgrounds as well as the inclusion of habitat or attributes that help to characterize a species or place it in context.

March 2 – June 2, 2019

A contemporary take on the ancient, yet ever-evolving, art of cutting paper comprises a range of techniques and materials – from vintage maps and magazines to a leaf, car tire, and saw blade. To transform paper, rubber, metal, and more into thought-provoking artworks, artists explore varied piercing and cutting techniques that provide endless possibilities for change. Cutting into and through surfaces, artists alter items from opaque to transparent, flat to sculptural, rigid to delicate, and ordinary to exquisite. The process and precision required are laborious, technically demanding, and always astonishing. The art of paper cutting dates back thousands of years, with early artwork emerging from sixth-century China, extending worldwide by the fourteenth century, and later sparking a wave of folk art traditions. Celebrating both innovation and tradition, this exhibition features the work of more than fifty artists, representing diverse styles, techniques, and sizes from three-inch artworks to sprawling, complex installations.