Your Dog Wants You to Visit This New York Art Exhibit

“Man’s best friend” is still one of the most ubiquitous ways of describing dogs. While that maxim should maybe be gender-inclusive in this, the year of Chappell Roan 2024, it’s a sentiment we stand by and one the art gallery Timothy Taylor explores in their current, New York-based exhibit Dog Days of Summer.

The dog-centric show, which opened on June 20 and is running through August 23, is a group exhibition that looks at dogs as a subject in art history. Dogs have historically played many roles in art — muse, companion, and metaphor — and this show presents them all.

About Dog Days

The exhibit showcases over 60 pieces of artwork, including renowned artists Pablo Picasso, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Gordon Parks.The artwork also showcases a myriad of formats. For example, Alex Da Corte’s piece “Lucy” is a wood sculpture in the form of a sweet pup, while Hilary Pecis’s “Mango” is an acrylic painting of a gorgeous young dog amidst a colorful background of pillows. 

While the show doesn’t have a single curator, James Newton, Timothy Taylor’s artist and institutional liaison, tells us about the inspiration behind the show. 

“The inspiration for this show arose from two sources: a desire to put together a classic, lighthearted group exhibition that captures a sense of joy for summer in New York, and the sheer ubiquity of dogs in art — they're everywhere!” he says. “This exhibition explores just a small sliver of the subject, testifying to its incredible breadth. Over the course of putting this exhibition together, a fascinating set of secondary themes developed, but first and foremost the show is about the sheer, simple pleasure provided by man's best friend. It is a show that has something for everyone.”

Dogs have been historically everywhere, for basically forever — hunter-gatherers had etched leashed dogs into a sandstone cliff. And today, dog pictures, memes, or videos are central to our social media feeds and group chats. But dogs exist in so many different contexts (or, as Kamala Harris would put it, “the context of all in which [they] live and what came before [them]”), and this exhibit tells that story. 

Learning about artists through dogs

Another great thing about this show? We learn more about the artists themselves through the dogs who were in their lives. Did you know Pablo Picasso had a Dachshund named Lump? Photographer William Wegman’s career retrospective spanning four decades focused on his beloved Weimaraners. In Jonas Wood’s etching entitled “Three Dogs,“ which shows the titular pups gazing lovingly at the viewer, we see how dog parents and their pups understand each other’s body language and share intimate and deep bonds. 

Other works in the exhibit look at the historical representation of dogs, fantasy, psychology, and even commentary on consumerism. Robert Gober’s photograph “Untitled“ from 1976 is a picture of three adorable pups on an ad for a dog food brand with the tagline “The Eager Eater dog food,” looking at the ways dog food is marketed. 

Dogs through the years

Many different types of artwork are represented in the show, including sculptures, photography, paintings, and drawings. The earliest work is from 1915, while some pieces were made specifically for the exhibition from artists Hilary Pecis, Jesse Mockrin, and Ann Craven. Craven’s “Magic and Moonlight in Night Field” (seen in the image at top of the article) colorfully highlights the physicality of two French Bulldogs. 

For Newton, having a range of artwork showcasing dogs was imperative. “While this exhibition features images of dogs that stretch back over a century — spanning from Pablo Picasso’s Cubism and the folk interests of Grandma Moses to dynamic contemporary artists ... Artists from the same moment have depicted dogs in a multitude of fascinating ways, complicating what some see as a clear, linear progression. One could plan a whole series of ‘dog shows’ and never run out of interesting material or stories to tell,” he says. 

There’s still plenty of time to check out Dog Days of Summer, and the gallery allows those coming to the exhibit to bring their pup pals. They even have a water station and treats ready for the non-human patrons of the arts, so you have no excuse but to attend before the dog days of summer 2024 come to a close.