galleries [ 1 ] & [ 2 ]

foregrounding paradise: bevery penn

January 20 – march 6

reception: january 20, 5–7 pm

In Foregrounding Paradise, Beverly Penn, celebrated sculptor and Distinguished Professor Emerita, invites viewers to reconsider nature’s role in everyday life. The exhibition bridges thirty years of Penn’s career, bringing together her meditative botanical sculptures – intricate bronze casts of plant life – alongside her immersive 2002 installation At the Edge of Paradise.  

By placing these works in dialogue, the show traces Penn’s career-long investigation of ecology and environmental politics. Her work questions how we define, preserve, and foreground nature in an age of constant human intervention. 

about THE ARTIST

An internationally recognized artist and educator, Beverly Penn’s work is included in major collections across the United States, including the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; Racine Art Museum; El Paso Museum of Art; the Moody Foundation; and Yale University Art Gallery.  

She has been commissioned for several public art projects. Key projects include Unity in Diversity (Las Cruces, NM); the Community Core Sample Project and the Threshold Project (with Steve Wiman, Austin, TX); the Natives Project at Whole Foods Headquarters (Austin, TX); and large-scale installations for the Carte Hilton and 719 Ash Hilton Hotel in San Diego, CA. She is the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Artist Award Grant, a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain.