THE EXHIBITION

TAME YOUR CURIOSITY!

Asking questions, investigating objects, and making discoveries can be an exciting and wonderful experience. Sometimes, a single work of art can spark curiosity in many ways.

In the 1600s, Peter Paul Rubens, a painter from Flanders (now Belgium), painted a dramatic picture of a big cat hunt. The painting, Lion and Tiger Hunting, is now in an art museum in Rennes, France, where visitors admire the artist's ability, learn about the painting's history, and maybe get curious about it too.

But if the painting belonged to a museum of science, natural history, or living history, it might raise different questions: Is a man strong enough to wrestle with a lion? Do lions and tigers live in the same places? Did people really hunt big cats this way hundreds of years ago?

This exhibition looks at the same work of art from the perspective of four kinds of museums: an art museum, a living history museum, a science museum, and a natural history museum.

Museums of all kinds can inspire—and satisfy—curiosity. Come to the Clark, visit Lions and Tigers and Museums, Oh My!, and GET CURIOUS!

Kidspace is a partnership of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Under the umbrella of a shared theme, each museum presents its own exhibitions and related programming.

Lions and Tigers and Museums, Oh My! was organized by the Education Department at the Clark. Special thanks to Phoebe Long, Sirianna Santacruz and Andrew Davis for their help in the early stages of this project.