This week’s Wow at the Woodson

This week at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau:

Mining the museum’s holdings yields an array of significant and masterful works. Spanning the 18th through 21st centuries and encompassing a range of mediums from watercolor to oil and metal to wood, “Collection Classics” comprises work by John James Audubon, Martin Johnson Heade, Andrew Wyeth, and others along with work by contemporary artists, including Robert Bateman, Tony Angell, James Morgan, and more.

Carved and painted with a keen eye for ornithological details that convey the behavior, personality and coloration of birds, these decorative wood sculptures often fool the eye, appearing real. From John Scheeler’s pale-colored mourning doves to Ma Hai Feng’s brilliant yellow and green budgerigar, these realistic sculptures seem poised for flight.

The Woodson Art Museum’s inaugural tactile art exhibition debuts with five avian sculptures, available on a “touch table” in the Decorative Arts Gallery. This touchable artwork installation – the first in an ongoing series – provides ready access to original artwork for visitors with low vision or blindness, also encouraging sighted visitors to experience a new way to “see” via the mind’s eye – visualizing artwork though touch.

While an avian theme unites artworks created between 1875 and 2018, the mediums and points of view will surprise and delight.