HUNTOPIA Exhibition Catalogue

Hunt Slonem’s HUNTOPIA is a world comprised of nearly a dozen extravagant vignettes from the internationally renowned painter and installation artist. Inhabiting two sizeable galleries, this exhibition delves into Slonem’s artwork and textiles, culling from local institutions, museums, and private collections to fully explore Slonem’s broader installation sensibility, evolving out of Slonem’s practice of acquiring and restoring national historic properties, which he saves from neglect and fills with wild combinations of his artwork and 19th-century antique collections. An ode to Slonem’s passion for “Collectorating” — the artist’s term for his signature style of collecting and curating — HUNTOPIA is an amalgam of Victorian-era paintings and antique furniture alongside a survey of Slonem’s own exuberant paintings dating from 1983 to present day. Much like Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox I exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1969, Slonem expounds on the artist-as-curator con