"Everybody's Going to be There: The American Rural Cemetery Movement"
OPENING MAY 2024
“Everybody’s Going to be There: The American Rural Cemetery Movement” will open to the public on Wednesday, May 8. The concept of a rural cemetery challenges the notion of burial spaces as being gloomy or frightening places. Rather, the rural cemetery acts as a social center with a living ecosystem – a place for scenic respite.
This new exhibit will explore how 19th-century Americans managed public health concerns, developed a new appreciation for green space and wildlife, and ensured their memorialization in a newly established public space: the rural cemetery. “Everybody’s Going to be There” presents a wide variety of fine wildlife art, maps, memorial art, natural animal and geological specimens, mourning jewelry and stationery, and cemetery tourism ephemera of the 19th-century.
"Perceived Realities: Wildlife, Land, and Myth"
ON VIEW NOW
New to the John L. Wehle Gallery as of February 2024 is a semi-permanent exhibit titled Perceived Realities: Wildlife, Land, and Myth. This new exhibit features some of the finest pieces of sporting and wildlife art collected by John L. Wehle himself.
Visitors will explore works by notable names such as John James Audubon, Bruno Liljefors, Carl Rungius, and Bob Kuhn and their elevation of animal art into the realm of wildlife fine art. The exhibit also delves into the changing landscape of 19th-century Rochester, NY, through oil painting, and invites visitors to reconsider the concept of the American cowboy.
"Becoming Gendered: Garment as Gender Artifact"
ON VIEW NOW
New to the John L. Wehle Gallery as of May of 2023 is Becoming Gendered, Garment as Gender Artifact. This multimedia exhibit explores how 19th-century Americans performed and navigated the changing landscape of gendered fashion.
Becoming Gendered offers guests a wide variety of historic gendered garments for men, women, and children spanning over a century. Hegemonic gendered clothing for adult men and women is compared to the development of recreational and leisurewear. Understructures for men, women and even children are exhibited as evolving tools worn to achieve gendered ideals. Challenging these 19th-century gendered norms in fashion and garment are the Dandy, the Bloomer, Dress Reformers and Women’s Rights advocates, the lady cyclist, female impersonators, and religious leaders such as the Public Universal Friend. Hodinöhsö:ni’ garment is exhibited as an entry-point into the discussion of how the Western gender binary system directly affects the gendering of 19th-century Hodinöhsö:ni’ clothing.
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