Feathered Friends: A Woodstock Aviary

This multidisciplinary presentation includes some forty works drawn primarily from WAAM’s permanent collection, explores how birds have been employed as artistic motifs throughout the past century, and the changing symbolism they have embodied over time. Themes such as menace, chaos, comfort, whimsy, and wonder arise as birds become a reflection of human tendencies and world events. Woodstock artists’ depictions of chickens play a recurring role in the presentation, and are represented as both charming and bellicose, while other works celebrate birds’ childlike humor, or the ultimate freedom of flight. In the monumental sculptures of Paul Fiene, birds take on the presence of a totem and carry a spiritual quality, and even an association of wisdom. Together, these works reveal how a familiar subject can shift in meaning across a century, reflecting broadly evolving ideas about peace and war, mortality and vulnerability, freedom and fear.

This exhibition is curated by Janis Staggs.

Image: Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003), Feathered Friends, oil on canvas board, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Gift of Eric Goldman, 1998-21-01