The Alternate Encyclopedia is a unique installation by artist Sue Johnson, bringing together her own prints, drawings, paintings, and also objects “found” in Carleton College Collections and elsewhere. Johnson’s paintings and prints invoke images of microscopic specimens, and botanical and zoological illustrations. The Alternate Encyclopedia is an on-going project to present fanciful 2-dimensional illustrations with real objects in contexts illuminating the human impulse to “capture, collect, name, tame, dominate and re-create nature.” Imagine a slightly out-of-date natural history museum, with themed “cabinets of curiosity” organized by quirky “chapters,” which mimic science books written for popular audiences. Johnson’s installation playfully mixes science and science fiction, popular culture and high culture, discredited scientific theories and cutting edge research agendas. “The idea to create a fully fictitious encyclopedia came to me when I realized that I could entertain my desire for the fantastic while maintaining my interest in the pursuit of objective truth.”

The Alternate Encyclopedia, in Johnson’s words, has become “an ever-expanding and shifting universe.” The Encyclopedia absorbs local materials as the exhibition travels between galleries and museums. In preparation for the fall exhibition at Carleton, the artist searched out likely specimens from college collections during a spring visit to campus. The Biology and Geology departments yielded wondrous specimens and models. And the Archives and Gould Library Special Collections, rich in penguins from President Larry Gould’s Antarctic researches, inspired a small satellite exhibition titled The Alternate Encyclopedia Annex: Penguiniana.

Sue Johnson is Stephen Muller Distinguished Professor of Art at St. Mary’s College of Maryland where she also serves as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Sue Johnson: The Alternate Encyclopedia was organized by the Tweed Museum of Art-University of Minnesota-Duluth. The exhibition will later travel to the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and the University of Richmond Art Museums.