The Walters Art Museum Presents Three Animal-Inspired Exhibitions

These diverse exhibitions explore animals as companions in life and in death in medieval Europe and Ancient Egypt, and examine once popular luxury materials sourced from wildlife

BALTIMORE, MD (July 16, 2025)—Three upcoming exhibitions at the Walters Art Museum center around animals and their representations in art, providing visitors with a fascinating look at how people have related to wildlife and their own animal companions across cultures and time periods. Paws on Parchment will open August 6, 2025, Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt, organized by the Brooklyn Museum, will follow on September 27, 2025, and Art From Wildlife [working title] will round out a year of animal-themed offerings on November 5, 2026.

This trio of exhibitions, featuring works ranging from Egyptian antiquities to medieval manuscripts to contemporary video installations, masterfully weaves together narratives that leverage artworks both from the wide breadth of the Walters’ permanent collection as well as essential loans from organizing and partner institutions to tell stories about animals, including those related to their irreplaceable and enduring place in society and their sometimes fraught relationship with humans.

“The presence of animals in our daily lives is an enduring but fragile phenomenon, and that’s exactly what makes these new exhibitions so intriguing,” said Ani Proser, Chief Curator and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Quincy Scott Curator of Asian Art. “The dynamic between humans and animals is varied, and the diverse objects on view in these exhibitions demonstrate just that. By centering animals and art objects related to them, we are able to connect with people from ancient civilizations. Through these works, we can learn about the daily lives of the people who commissioned, created, and used these objects, and we can better understand the myriad roles animals played across time and throughout the world. ”

Paws on Parchment

The first of the animal-themed exhibitions to open at the Walters is Paws on Parchment, which will be on view in the Walters’ Manuscript Gallery from August 6, 2025, to February 15, 2026—opening just in time for International Cat Day on August 8. Centuries before cat memes took over the internet, the antics of fanciful felines were already popular in the margins of medieval manuscripts. This exhibition explores how medieval people thought about, engaged with, and admired cats through the animals’ presence in manuscripts from the period.

“Cats filled many important roles in the medieval era,” said Lynley Anne Herbert, Robert and Nancy Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. “Like today, some cats were considered beloved pets whose behavior amused and exasperated their owners. However, felines also served an important function as hunters that protected valuable books and textiles, food stores, and even people from disease-carrying rodents and other vermin. Cats could also carry symbolic and moral meaning in this period, which is reflected in the manuscripts we will have on view.”

In Paws on Parchment, visitors can discover depictions of cats preserved in the pages of European, Islamic, and Armenian manuscripts, including a 15th-century “keyboard cat.” Most notably, visitors can see real pawprints left by a cat walking across the pages of a Flemish manuscript as the ink dried in the 1470s. A handful of these “pawprint” manuscripts are known around the world, but this is the first time the Walters’ example has ever been on view.

This presentation is another six-month rotation in the Walters’ dedicated Manuscript Gallery, which debuted in 2023. Following this exhibition, the gallery will host Medieval Mindscapes: Interiority and Imagination in Books of Hours [working title], on view from February to August 2026.

Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt

From September 27, 2025, to January 11, 2026, visitors will have the opportunity to better understand the practice of animal mummification in Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt. This major exhibition, organized by the Brooklyn Museum, explores the important role animals played in ancient Egyptian society—both in life and in the afterlife. Millions of mummified animals, including dogs, cats, birds, snakes, and more, have been excavated at burial sites across Egypt, leading to questions about how and why these mummies were made.

Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt seeks to explore those questions and reveal the stories behind animal mummification. Visitors can uncover the cultural context of animals in ancient Egypt, from predators to pets to symbols of the gods; find out why animals were mummified; learn about the technical process of animal mummification; see what secrets have been exposed about these mummies through modern imaging; and more.

“We’re looking forward to bringing this exhibition to the Walters because it complements many of the objects we already have on view in the museum, including our own case dedicated to animal mummification,” said Lisa Anderson-Zhu, Curator of Ancient Mediterranean Art and Curator of Provenance. “This is a wonderful opportunity for visitors to learn more about this aspect of Egyptian culture, as well as the complex role of animals in Egyptian society.”

Soulful Creatures presents more than a hundred objects, including a decorative falcon coffin and an elaborately wrapped ibis mummy, from the renowned Egyptian collection of the Brooklyn Museum and complemented by objects from the Walters Art Museum’s own collection, such as a delicately carved dog statue from Roman Egypt. These objects exemplify the important place animals held in ancient Egyptians’ worldview and provide a fascinating look at how humans have related to the animal world across time.

Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt is organized by Yekaterina Barbash, Curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art, and Edward Bleiberg, Curator Emeritus, Brooklyn Museum.

Art From Wildlife [working title]

Some of the most luxurious objects in Asian, European, and American art were made from four rare materials: kingfisher feathers, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn, and elephant ivory. For centuries, these materials were desired by the powerful and wealthy due to their scarcity and the difficult nature of obtaining and working with them. However, the cost to wildlife, coupled with a growing environmental consciousness, led to all four materials being banned from use in artworks starting in the 20th century.

Art From Wildlife, on view from November 5, 2026, through January 31, 2027, includes a number of objects drawn from the Walters’ collections of Asian, European, American, and African art. The exhibition showcases remarkable examples of each of the four materials and looks at how art and luxury goods made from wild animal materials testify to the enduring human desire to capture the beauty and power of wild animals while exploring contemporary responses to society’s evolving relationship with nature.

“Art From Wildlife provides the opportunity to address questions we receive from visitors regularly about materials such as tortoise shell and elephant ivory and why we preserve the artworks in our collection that are made from these materials,” said Dany Chan, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Walters. “The exhibition will also allow us to contextualize the historical appeal of these materials, the impact of their use, and contemporary responses to the traditions that popularized them in the first place, providing an opportunity for reflection and reconciliation.”

These exhibitions are generously funded by Supporters of the Walters Art Museum.

ABOUT THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM

The Walters Art Museum is a cultural hub in the heart of Baltimore, located in the city’s Mount Vernon neighborhood. The museum’s collection spans more than seven millennia, from 5000 BCE to the 21st century, and encompasses 36,000 objects from around the world. Walking through the museum’s historic buildings, visitors encounter a stunning panorama of thousands of years of art, from romantic 19th-century images of French gardens to mesmerizing Ethiopian icons, richly illuminated Qur’ans and Gospel books, ancient roman sarcophagi, and serene images of the Buddha. Since its founding, the Walters’ mission has been to bring art and people together to create a place where people of every background can be touched by art. As part of this commitment, admission to the museum and special exhibitions is always free.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Admission to the museum is free. The Walters Art Museum is located at 600 N. Charles St., north of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. For general museum information, call 410-547-9000 or visit thewalters.org.

Free admission to the Walters Art Museum is made possible through the combined generosity of individual members and donors, foundations, corporations, and grants from the City of Baltimore, Maryland State Arts Council, Citizens of Baltimore County, and Howard County Government and Howard County Arts Council.