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Today at the Museum

June 20, 2013
SPECIAL EVENT

Third Thursday: Get Local

6 – 9 p.m.
museum-wide

TUNE IN to our new music partnership with 89.3 The Current at the debut of "Local Current Live at Third Thursday" with DJ David Campbell. HEAR LOCAL band more »
Exhibition

Maria Sibylla Merian, Moths, Caterpillars, and Foliage, mixed intaglio, hand-colored, The Minnich Collection, The Ethel Morrison Van DerLip Fund, 1966

Metamorphosis: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Insects of Suriname

Saturday, December 22, 2007—Sunday, June 15, 2008
Galleries 315 and 316
Free Exhibition

In 1699, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) sailed to Suriname to draw and study the insects of the rain forest. She was particularly fascinated by the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies and moths, and her images reveal their successive stages of development from egg to caterpillar, pupa, and mature adult. The book that resulted from her two-year study, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (Transformation of Suriname Insects), included ninety studies of insects, most drawn life-size. A pioneer in a long line of female botanical artists Merian was the first to depict insects in relation to their host plants. This exhibition features twenty of Merian’s images of Suriname, selected from the MIA's permanent collection.