Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
- Lenfest Center for the Arts
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- Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
- Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
- Mohammad Omer Khalil: Musings
- 開花結果 Open Flowers Bear Fruit
- Curricular Connections: Teaching with the Museums' Collections
- We Love Life Whenever We Can
- Mother Clay: The Pottery of Three Pueblo Women
- Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists
- Museum Menagerie
- Capturing Color
- The Root of the Matter
- "My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples"
- Auspicious Animals
- Chaos in Color
- Inscapes
- Breaking the Chains
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Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
On View: October 2, 2024 – May 4, 2025
Location: Watson Galleries
Save the Date: Artist Talk & Reception, Thursday, October 3, 2024, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Image (left): Emma Steinkraus, Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn, 2024, detail, printed wallpaper. Image courtesy of the artist.
In Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn, W&L Assistant Professor of Art and artist Emma Steinkraus creates a fantastical panoramic wallpaper that documents the contributions of over 100 women artist-naturalists who worked between the 16th and 19th centuries. Immersing the viewer in a landscape of sinuous trees, flora and fauna, this exhibition celebrates an alternative art historical canon that counteracts the erasure of women from the histories of art and science.
The exhibition is curated by Nalleli Guillen, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Emma Steinkraus, and made possible with the support of 91传媒 and the Museum Art Fund.
-
Museums
- Visit
-
Exhibitions
- Current Exhibits
- Upcoming Exhibits
- Online Exhibits
-
Past Exhibits
- Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE (好久不見)
- Emma Steinkraus: Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn
- Mohammad Omer Khalil: Musings
- 開花結果 Open Flowers Bear Fruit
- Curricular Connections: Teaching with the Museums' Collections
- We Love Life Whenever We Can
- Mother Clay: The Pottery of Three Pueblo Women
- Born of Fire: Contemporary Japanese Women Ceramic Artists
- Museum Menagerie
- Capturing Color
- The Root of the Matter
- "My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples"
- Auspicious Animals
- Chaos in Color
- Inscapes
- Breaking the Chains
- Programs
- Education
- Collections
- About
- Galleries
- Japanese Tearoom
Emma Steinkraus
Emma Steinkraus makes colorful, fantastical paintings and installations about gender, mythmaking, and the more-than-human world. Her work is represented by in New York and has been included in recent exhibitions at the UNTITLED Art Fair (Miami), Sow & Tailor x WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong), the StadtPalais Museum (Stuttgart, Germany) and Hashimoto Contemporary (Los Angeles). She has attended artist residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Wassaic Project and the Blue Mountain Center, among many others. Awards include an at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in 2020 and a Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022. Her work has been on the cover of and featured in , Burnaway, , Art Maze Magazine and Juxtapoz. She lives and works in Lexington, Virginia. To learn more, visit her or profile.
Photo by Stephanie Shih
As an artist, I create colorful, fantastical paintings, digital projects and installations that foreground women and nonhuman nature. My ongoing research-based project, , centers on a mural wallpaper that documents the contributions women made to natural history and scientific art between the 16th and 19th centuries.
To make the wallpaper, I used Adobe Photoshop to create a panoramic landscape that combines my own hand-painted elements with illustrations of flora and fauna by historical women artists. The result is not a realistic habitat, but rather a compendium of close looking that crosses borders of time and space. Many of the artists whose illustrations are included are not widely known, and, because they worked in diverse genres (from still life to botanical art to bird-and-flower painting), they have rarely been considered as a collective. Together, their work truly forms an impossible garden, one in which a single tree might contain illustrations made by 20 women across three continents and as many centuries.
While the individual stories in this project took place long ago, the need to grapple with these histories and their impact on the present remains urgent. The art made by women before the 20th century is still undervalued. Zoological and botanical art continue to be viewed as marginal art historical genres even as we live through unprecedented threats to the biosphere. My work asks us to reevaluate the work of marginalized women artists and to treat paintings of animals and plants as serious artistic genres. Using the garden as a metaphor for the entanglement of humans and nonhuman nature, I create immersive spaces in which ecological and human stories are interwoven. My goal is to help us see ourselves as deeply embedded within both complex histories and environments, to better know and love the other living things around us.
Image courtesy of artist
Events and Programming
Lunch & Learn: Buried Stories, Hidden Lives
Select Days in 2025 and Locations, 12:00 – 1:00 PM; Lunch served at 11:30 AM
Join the Art Museum and Galleries for a Winter 2025 series inspired by exhibitions LONG TIME NO SEE and Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn. This series invites poets, scholars, and community members to consider the questions: “Whose voices and stories have shaped our dominant historical narratives? Whose stories have been excluded, erased, and hidden, and how can we render these stories more visible?” Free and open to all, with preregistration required.
Photo: 美(國)人(The Rose Piece), 2023, Stephanie Shih, installation detail ? Shaun Roberts
For the Love of Plants: Plant Worlds in the Shadows of Empire
Banu Subramaniam (Author of Botany of Empire, Professor and Chair of Women and Gender Studies at Wellesley College)
Thursday, March 13, 2025, 5:30 – 6:30 PM
University Chapel
Plants worlds are deeply entangled in human worlds. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary scholarship in feminist, postcolonial and indigenous studies, Professor Banu Subramaniam, a renowned plant evolutionary biologist and scholar in feminist science studies and environmental humanities, will reflect on how gender, race, class, sexuality, and nation shape the foundational language, terminology, and theories of the modern plant sciences, and how botanical theories remain grounded in the violence of their colonial pasts. Professor Subramaniam wrestles with these difficult origins and lays a roadmap to imagine new biological frameworks that harness the power of feminist thought to reimagine and reinvigorate our love of plants.
Wildflower Walk with Artist Emma Steinkraus
Saturday, April 26, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Brushy Hills Nature Preserve
Learn to identify local flora and fauna and celebrate Rockbridge County in bloom with artist Emma Steinkraus! Participants will meet at the trailhead for Brushy Hills Nature Preserve. Wear comfortable walking shoes or hiking boots, and sun protection is recommended. This event is free, open to all, and is appropriate for all ages and fitness levels.
Past Events
Artist Talk & Reception with Emma Steinkraus
Thursday, October 3, 2024, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Artist Talk, 5:30 PM, Northen Auditorium (Leyburn Library)
Reception, 6:30 PM, Watson Galleries
Join us for an Artist Talk with Emma Steinkraus in Northen Auditorium and learn more about her digital engagement with women artist-naturalists in her exhibition, “Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn,” on view in Watson Galleries. The talk will be followed by a gallery reception from 6:30 to 7:30 PM, with food and drinks provided. The event is free and open to all. Image courtesy of the artist.
Museum Mindfulness Initiative: Meditation Garden
Every Saturday, October 12 – November 2, 2024, 8:00 – 9:00 AM
Watson Galleries
Craving peace and calm? Join the Museums at W&L for guided meditation with Catherine Epstein. Become more present, centered, and relaxed while being surrounded by the fantastical world of Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn. Grab your yoga mat and earn a Live Well W&L token! Free and open to all. Mats provided, and reservation required.
Family Storytime at the Museums
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Thursday, October 17, 2024
10:30 AM for ages 0 to 3
11:00 AM for ages 0 to 5
Watson Galleries
Join the Museums at W&L, in partnership with the Lexington Rockbridge Regional Library, for a special family storytime in the fantastical world of Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn in the Watson Galleries. The event will feature stories, songs, and movements inspired by the exhibition for caregivers and their littles, ages 0 to 5. Free and open to all.
Gallery Tour and Nature Bingo with Artist Emma Steinkraus
Saturday, October 19, 2024, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Watson Galleries
Join artist Emma Steinkraus for a mini-tour of Impossible Garden: Dusk & Dawn followed by a game of Nature Bingo on Woods Creek Trail. Come prepared with good walking shoes, water, and sun protection! Open to all and appropriate for all ages and fitness levels.
Artful Yoga: Museum Mindfulness Initiative
Saturdays, January 18 - February 8, 2025
8:30 – 9:30 AM
Watson Galleries
Artful Yoga is back! Join Wendy Orrison, yogi and owner of Center of Gravity Yoga studio, for 60 minutes of gentle, artful yoga surrounded by the fantastical world of Impossible Garden/Dusk & Dawn. Each class offers full-body movement and awakening, with a unique flow every session. Wendy provides modifications and welcomes both newcomers and seasoned yogis. Come with an open heart, a joyful attitude, and a desire to move in a beautiful, inviting setting. Yoga mats are provided, and perpetration is required. Free and open to all!