Artist’s Vitae:

BOOKS

1975 A MATTER OF TIME. 
David R. Godine, publisher, Boston.  Award (American Institute of Graphic Arts).

1980 HALF LIFE. 
David R. Godine, publisher. 1986

ILLUMINATIONS, A BESTIARY.  
Text by Stephen Jay Gould. WW Norton, publisher. Award (American Institute of Graphic Arts).

1991A COLLECTOR’S CATALOGUE
Limited Edition Artist’s book.  Bow and Arrow Press, Cambridge.

1991 NATURALEZAS
Museo Nacional de Ciancias Naturales, Madrid, publisher.

1992 FINDERS KEEPERS, Eight Collectors.
Text by Stephen Jay Gould.   WW Norton, publisher.

1995 Photographs for SUSPENDED ANIMATION
by Dr. F Gonzalez Crussi, Harcourt Brace

1996 CURIOSITEIT,
Collections of the Universiteitsmuseum Utrecht

1998 SPECIAL CASES,
Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters Chronicle Books, publisher

1999 SWIFT AS A SHADOW 
Extinct and Endangered Birds and Animals.
Collections of University of Leiden.  Houghton-Mifflin, publishers
Best of Show  (43rd annual New England Book Show).

2000 CROSSING OVER: Where Art and Science Meet (with Stephen Jay Gould)
Harmony Books (Random House)

2001 60 photographs for A Long Look at Nature by Margaret Martin,  
University North Carolina Press

2002 DICE  Deception, Fate and Rotten Luck  Text by Ricky Jay.  Quantuck Lane Press

2003 OWLS HEAD  Quantuck Lane Press

2006 BOOKWORM  Quantuck Lane Press

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

1990 HIDDEN WONDERS, An Engagement Calendar.  68 color photographs.
Bishop Museum Press and University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.

1991 THREADS OF EVOLUTION, A Calendar created for ORACLE Computer Co.
Forward Publishers, London. 12 color photographs.

1997-8  Calendars  for 1997 and 1998  for American Museum of Natural History
Workman Publishers, New York, twelve color photographs each

2006 TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY

2006 Selective Subversions (May issue), Conjunctions Magazine (portfolio)

 

ARTICLES 

1995 Art Bulletin  “The Problematics of Collecting” July,  volume LXXVll number 2 author of The Game of the Name

1998  American Book Review, focus: “ The Monstrous and the Marvelous; The Dual Nature of the Grotesque”  Purcell author of First Breath, Last Sigh

2001  Author of introduction to Rock of Ages, Sands of Time, (Barbara Page’s paintings of the fossil record).  University of Chicago. 

2004 Natural History Magazine.  A Room Revisited  (Sept issue)

2007  Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA,  wrote catalogue for exhibition Medea and Her Sisters: Leonard Baskin’s Images of Women

2008  Virginia Quarterly Review:  The Stories of Strangers (April issue)

 

PROFILES OF RWP

1998 Atlantic Monthly. “Brief Lives -- an Eye for Anomaly” (essay by Marshall Fisher on R. Purcell’s studio)

2003 Agni Magazine (Boston University). Breaking Ground  Portfolio of photographs and critical essay by Sven Birkerts

2003 The Boston Globe, text by Joshua Glenn

 

RECENT REVIEWS

2007  “Metamorphosis” Boston Review  by John Crowley ( review of Purcell’s work)  Weekend America, American Public Media, discussion of Bookworm with Barbara Bogave (November)

2007 Los Angeles Times, Susan Salter Reynolds

 

SELECTED PORTFOLIOS OF PHOTOGRAPHS

1987 American Photographer (February).

BBC Wildlife Magazine (May).

Catalog: Torino Photographia (Ed Panini).

Harvard Magazine (bi-monthly feature with S.J. Gould thru 1989: “Fossil Endpaper”).

1988 Smithsonian Magazine (October).

1989 Smithsonian Magazine (October).

1992 Smithsonian Magazine (October)

1994-2001 The Sciences: bimonthly column  “On Common Ground” (with S J Gould)

2005 Mare Magazine,  (Berlin Germany) portfolio of fish photographs

2006 Art Journal (College Art Association) “Mediating Political ‘Things,’ and the Forked Tongue of Modern Culture: A Conversation with Bruno Latour,” text by Christian S. G. Katti (Spring issue); shows reconstruction of museum of Olaus Worm, Copenhagen (1655) for Two Rooms exhibition

2006 Slate (online), “State of Decay,” text by Amanda Shaffer, November ; slideshow of Purcell’s work.

2007 National Geographic  A Fin is a Wing is a Limb (November 2007) photographs illustrating evolutionary development.

 

INSTALLATIONS

1989 DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, A Trail of Ash  in “Ten Artists, Ten Visions”  

1991 Museo Nacional de Ciencias, Madrid, Naturalezas  (and other museums in Spain)

1992 Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, Musee de l’Ame  

1993 Museo Nacional de Ciencias, Madrid, El Real Gabinete  Permanent installation of the history of the museum’s collections

2001 Photographic Resource Center, Boston, Strange Attractor: In the Orbit of the Artist (Exhibition Curator)

2003 Santa Monica Museum of Art.  Two Rooms: 1655 / 2000  Traveling exhibition, Purcell’s reconstruction of the 17th century museum of Olaus Worm and of her studio

(October-December) Tufts University Art Gallery:  Two Rooms: 1655 / 2000

2004 January-March   Mount Holyoke Art Museum: Two Rooms: 1655 / 2000

2004-2005  Harvard University, Science Center  Special Exhibition Gallery: Bringing Nature Inside, 17th Century Natural History, Classification, and Vision.

2006 Smith College, Northampton, MA, Dissolution and the Singular Object

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS (2 Person where noted)

1972 MIT Creative Photo Lab (2).

1973 Brockton Art Center (2).

1975 University of Iowa Art Center.
Neikrug Gallery, NYC.

1976 Addison Gallery, Andover, MA.
Madison Art Center, Wisconsin.

1977 Delaware Art Museum.
Roswell Museum, New Mexico.
Gallery Fiolet, Amsterdam.
Photographer’s Gallery, London.
Il Diaframma, Milano.
Photography Place, Philadelphia.

1978 Santa Fe Gallery of Photography, New Mexico.

1980 Boston Athenæum.
Marcuse Pfeifer, NYC.

1981 Focus, San Francisco.

1982 Marcuse Pfeifer, NYC.

1983 Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara (2)
University of Vermont.
Robert Klein, Boston.

1984 Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, Michigan.
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (2).

1985 Houston Center for Photography (2).

1986 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
Marcuse Pfeifer, NYC.
Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College.

1988  Academy of Fine Arts, Honolulu.
Field Museum, Chicago.

1989 Catherine Edelman Gallery,Chicago.
Marcuse Pfeiffer, NYC .

1990 Bishop Museum, Honolulu.

1992  Aiken Gallery

1993 New York Academy of Sciences: Eden in a Jar: The Collector, the Curator, and the Camera.
Center for Photographic Arts, Carmel, CA Under Glass, 2 person with Richard Ross.

1995 Cleveland Museum of Art, Extinct Animals
Gallery of Contemporary Photography Santa Monica:  “Few know the sweetness of the twisted apples”

1998  Los Angeles Public Library  The Writing on the Wall

1999 Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington DC.  Swift as a Shadow

2000  School of Design, University of Wisconsin  Nature as Teacher
College of the Atlantic  Extinction Then and Now

2007  Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington DC. Bookworm

2007 Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA, Bookworm: Photographs by Rosamond Purcell

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2001-2003:   
National Academy of Science, Washington DC. The Art of Neuroscience: Image and Understanding   
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln Ma. Terrors and Wonders:  Monsters in Contemporary Art    
National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomies; travel to California Science Center, Los Angeles (March 2005)   
Mobius Gallery, Boston. Words on Fire   
University of Rhode Island, Transgressions/Transformations   
Ricco Moresca Gallery, New York, Mütter Museum photography   
National Academy of Science, The Beauty of Phenomena; Art in the Communication of Science   
Yerba Buena Museum, San Francisco: photographs from Dice: Deception Fate and Rotten Luck (text Ricky Jay) 

2004 University of Wyoming Art Museum.  Dice: Deception, Fate and Rotten Luck
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT.  Bottle: Contemporary Art and Vernacular Tradition
Amazing! Maine Stories, Maine Historical Society, Portland, ME (with artifacts from foundry of William Buckminster)

2006 Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale; travel to Artspace, Kansas City Art Institute

2007 L.C. Bates Museum, Hinckley, ME, Artists as Naturalists

 

SELECTED RECENT LECTURES

1996 University of California, Santa Barbara.  Symposium: Microcosms: Perception through Possession.  Lecture: Representing Possessions, with museum director David Wilson (Museum of Jurassic Technology) and artist Richard Ross (UCSB)

2000 Brooklyn Museum of Art, Marvels of Art and Nature in the Guennol Collection, public dialogue with curators Diana Fane (Brooklyn Museum) and Richard Townsend (Art Institute of Chicago)

2000-2002: The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (with novelist Rikki Ducornet); The  New York Academy of Science (with Stephen Jay Gould); Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA, and Maryland Institute College of Art (both with Dr. Gould); College Art Association, Philadelphia, February 2002, panel on Museums of Philadelphia; Maryland Institute, October 2002, panel—Sideshow Art: the Aesthetics of the Unusual, the Exaggerated, and the Abnormal; Jackson Hole Wyoming, The National Museum of Wildlife Art: Framing the Wild, panel  discussion 

2003 Weissman Center for Leadership, Mount Holyoke College: The Political Embryo: Reconceiving Human Reproduction: panel discussion: In Utero, Imaging and Imagining.

2004 Providence Athenaeum with RI School of Design.  Symposium: Inspired by Nature; The Art of the Natural History Book 

2005 Weissman Center Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, MA, lecture for conference The Metaphysics of Water

2005 University of Missouri, St. Louis public lecture 

2005 Halsey Institute, Charleston, SC.  Lecture.

2006 Dublin Blaschka Congress, National Museum of Ireland (Natural History).  Lecture: The Properties of Light and Glass

2006 City University of New York, Graduate Center, The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society.  Lecture.

2007 Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Lecture: “THINGS is where it’s at” 
James Madison University:    “Double or Nothing: Metamorphic Mysteries”
Mary  Baldwin College:   “Metaphoric Histories”

 

MUSEUM AND INSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATION

Boston Athenæum
Calvin College, Michigan
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
Delaware Art Museum
Harry Ransome Humanities Center, Austin, Texas
Houston Museum of Art
Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts
Metropolitan Museum, New York
Mount Holyoke Art Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National  Academy of Science, Washington, DC
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD
New Orleans Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Polaroid Corporation
San Francisco Museum of Art
University of Massachusetts
Victoria and Albert Museum, London