Snakes in the museum! 

Anyone who saw what happened to Mr. Popper’s penguins in the Guggenheim might be nervous about bringing live animals to an art museum, but that didn’t stop Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In a first for the MFA, if not any art museum, creatures including a horned owl, a broad-winged hawk, a corn snake, a painted turtle, along with ducks, rabbits, and woodchucks, all from the Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary, will be on hand to serve as live models during family art programs. The sessions will be offered February 20–24,  part of the “Cogan Family Foundation Vacation Week Adventures” built around the show “Paper Zoo,” a selection of animal art from 1600 to the present made (inexplicably only) in Europe and North America. Artists include Rembrandt, Picasso, Calder, and of course Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, the patron saint of cat art, whose undated Prowling Cat is shown here.

The presence of live animals in the sacrosanct precincts of art, even the education department, raises a number of questions. Will the critters escape into the galleries? Will they bite the tiny hands that sketch them? And, naturally, Why a duck? Why not a chicken? 

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Harriet Otis Cruft Fund/Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston