de Young

See tomorrow's art start tonight at the 2012 New Generations: Student Showcase. This year's theme is a call to action–think of it as a one-word manifesto: Matter!

From his earliest forays into fashion design, Jean Paul Gaultier utilized surprising and sometimes recycled materials. As a child, inspired by his grandmother’s corset, Gaultier repurposed crumpled newspaper to create the conical-shaped falsies that he attached to his beloved teddy bear, Nana. Entering its seventh year, Discarded to Divine—an event that auctions off designer duds made from donated clothing to benefit the homeless—exemplifies Gaultier’s earliest instincts to recycle with style and purpose.

FRAME|WORK is a weekly blog series that highlights an artwork in the Museums' permanent collections. This week, we feature a painting by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, a member of the Papunya Tula artist collective. Children’s story (water dreaming for two children) is currently on loan to Australia's National Gallery of Victoria.

For the past month, March Artist-In-Residence Joy Broom has been creating extravagant, multilayered, three-dimensional specimen boxes. Combining her intricate line drawings of organic elements with actual insects, seed pods, branches, body references, antique maps and biological medical sources—all covered with purified beeswax—she presents a unique cabinet of curiosities that provide further reflections of the broader natural universe.

Waxed and Winged: Museum of Natural Curiosities, Broom's Insect Specimen Series ranges from early flat cardboard collection boxes with antique maps to four inch deep glass-front "natural extravaganzas" as seen in this video.