10 Mar 2024 Windgate Museum of Art presents multi-gallery exhibition to celebrate Solar Eclipse

The Windgate Museum of Art at Hendrix College (WMA) opened “In the Shadow of the Moon,” on Jan. 26. It is a dynamic, multi-media exhibition centered around humankind’s history and interest in the moon and space, to celebrate the upcoming total solar eclipse. Hendrix College and the Central Arkansas region are in the path of totality for the April 8 eclipse, an event that will leave millions in North America awestruck. 

Among the most spectacular visible natural phenomena—lightning storms, shooting stars, the aurora borealis—a solar eclipse seems to earn the greatest reverence, and with good reason. 

“The star of ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’ is the April 8, 2024, eclipse itself,” says curator Christian Cutler, director of the WMA. “This exhibition is both a celebration and a jumping-off point. I hope visitors to ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’ learn and reflect on humankind’s relationship to the Moon and the Sun.” 

The exhibition explores how different cultures have presented and interpreted solar eclipses in art. For instance, visitors will see eclipses portrayed as a dragon or a celestial wolf attempting to swallow the sun and included in the backdrop of European Renaissance crucifixion scenes to set a sorrowful or ominous tone.

The exhibition will also highlight the staying power of the solar eclipse as a worthy artistic subject. Science fiction illustrators, contemporary sculptors, and even video game designers incorporate eclipses into their work. “47 Rockets,” a mini-exhibit inside “In the Shadow of the Moon” by Nashville art duo Raina Belleau and Caleb Churchill, will explore history and folklore surrounding the moon with sculpture, video and photography.

One of the greatest undertakings in preparing the exhibition is the projection experience in the Wilcox-Todd Gallery. The museum is producing an immersive video about eclipses with financial assistance from the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium (ASGC), a part of NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. Landry Dosher ’24, an English and theatre arts double major at Hendrix, provides the voiceover for the script written by Lindsey Knight, the WMA’s education curator.

Visitors who approach the museum from the east side will be greeted by 80 selections from a juried competition of creations by Arkansas kindergarten through 12th-grade students, centered on the themes of the cosmos, eclipses, the solar system and human interaction with space. The Window Gallery, where this art from around the state will be displayed, faces east and south on the outside of the building, making it available for viewing 24 hours a day, seven days a week.