• Eadweard Muybridge: Animal Locomotion. Plate 755. (Flying Pigeon), 1887; collotype; plate: 13 5/8 x 19 3/8 in.; BAMPFA, gift of Jan Leonard and Jerrold A. Peil.

Five Tables of Higher and Higher

What is with the human obsession with flight? First it was Icarus, next it was Amelia Earhart, and now Elon Musk. Curated by the BAMPFA Student Committee, this selection of works from the museum’s collection explores the nature of flight and what it means to soar. How does it feel to be on top of the world? Works on view include one of Eadweard Muybridge’s locomotion studies of flying; abstract depictions of birds in flight by L. Alcopley and Zao Wou-ki; Andy Warhol’s photograph Hot Air Balloon in Colorado; Vija Celmins’s multi-process print Concentric Bearings, A; and depictions of aircraft in multiple mediums across cultures.