Museum of Art - DeLand

Thomas D. Mangelsen
2025-02-08 10:00 - 2025-08-31 16:00 (America/New_York) | Museum of Art – DeLand, 600 N. Woodland Blvd., DeLand, FL, 32720, United States
The Museum of Art – DeLand is proud to present Thomas D. Mangelsen – A Life in the Wild. Renowned American nature photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen has traveled throughout the natural world for nearly 50 years observing and photographing the Earth’s last great wild places. From polar bears in the Arctic to vast herds of game on the plains of Africa, from the deep jungles of South America to the tigers of India, to images revealing the diversity of wildlife in the American West, Mangelsen has captured rare moments and vast panoramas from all seven continents.

Thomas D. Mangelsen, Dreamcatcher, 2000
Mangelsen is a critically-acclaimed photographer whose honors include being named Conservation Photographer of the Year by Nature’s Best Photography, the BBC’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year by North American Nature Photography Association, one of the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photo magazine and one of the 40 Most Influential Nature Photographers by Outdoor Photography. His award-winning photographs have been exhibited in major museums including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and collected by thousands around the world through his MANGELSEN®—Images of Nature Galleries. He has been praised by many as a spiritual descendant of Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.
After spending nearly 50 years of traveling to the wildest corners of North America and beyond, Mangelsen has become legendary for producing a body of work that includes truly awe-inspiring landscapes and some of the most recognizable wildlife scenes ever photographed, including many counted among the most important of the modern environmental age. Like those of Adams, Porter and Weston before him, his photographs are coveted by collectors worldwide.
Jane Goodall and Bill Allen, the now retired editor in chief of National Geographic, consider Mangelsen to be one of the most important nature photographers of his generation. “His photographs have impact that stays with you,” Allen says. “They allow viewers to momentarily escape from their busy lives and dwell inside big humbling landscapes. Rather than being mere documentarian in their purpose, they also reveal personalities of wild, sometimes imperiled animals, reminding us that they are creatures of remarkable sentience.”
Thomas D. Mangelsen, Rainwalk, 2002

ABOUT A LIFE IN THE WILD:
A LIFE IN THE WILD is an exhibition containing 40 of Mangelsen’s most resonant images—images that take viewers on a journey into the haunts of iconic species whose struggles for survival are metaphorical fulcrums for reflection in the 21st century.
In an age of rampant digital manipulation of imagery and an era in which many nature photographers take shortcuts to amass portfolios by frequenting “game farms”—facilities that rent out wildlife “models” by the hour—Mangelsen’s work stands as a striking and noble counterpoint, Allen says. Every single image in Mangelsen’s portfolio has been taken in the wild under natural conditions; the result of him waiting for the “picture perfect moment” across decades and often in hostile conditions. Such a body of work can only be achieved by having a heightened sense of animal behavior, an uncanny feel for being able to read changing atmospherics in the environment, and patience.
At a time when digital technology is, notoriously, reprogramming its users to have shorter attention spans, A LIFE IN THE WILD stands as a testament to the rewards that can come to people who slow down their lives and wait for nature’s revelations to happen.
A LIFE IN THE WILD showcases Mangelsen’s signature, award-winning photographs of landscape and wildlife in all seven continents. “Polar Dance”, for example, is a whimsical portrait of polar bears appearing to prance in the Arctic that National Geographic called one of the most important of our time for getting viewers to ponder the consequences of climate change.
The exhibition includes Mangelsen’s “Catch of the Day”, one of the most widely circulated wildlife photographs in history, showing the exact moment that a spawning salmon, trying to leap over a small waterfall along Alaska’s Brooks River, soars right into the awaiting jaws of a massive brown bear. “Catch of the Day” was not only a monumental achievement in photography because it occurred before the advent of digital cameras and involves no digital manipulation, but also because thousands of photographers have attempted to emulate it. Like all of the photographs in the exhibition, it sparks conversation.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
Thomas D. Mangelsen: A Life in the Wild
February 8 – August 31, 2025
Museum of Art – DeLand
600 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand, Florida 32720
Admission: Members Free | Future Members $5
Photo Credit: Dave Showalter
Thomas D. Mangelsen – A Life in the Wild
Produced by David J. Wagner, L.L.C.
David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Curator/Tour Director

Top Image: Thomas D. Mangelsen, Catch of the Day, Fujiflex Crystal Archive Print, 1988

Luciana Abait
2025-04-26 10:00 - 2025-07-06 16:00 | Museum of Art – DeLand Downtown, 100 N. Woodland Blvd., DeLand, 32720, United States
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Luciana Abait invites viewers to re-imagine nature through her manipulated photographic landscapes, installations, and photo-sculptures, exploring climate change, environmental fragility, and their impacts on immigrants in particular.

Abait’s work has been shown widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia in solo shows in galleries, museums, and international art fairs. She has completed numerous corporate and public art commissions, among them “Vistas”, a 24 feet mural commissioned by Miami-Dade Art in Public Places and “Hong Kong Windows”, commissioned by Swire Properties in Hong Kong.​ She was also part of The Billboard Creative (her artwork displayed on a Hollywood billboard), Projecting Possibilities, a video projection onto the street in Culver City and LUMINEX in Los Angeles, where her 34-foot-high immersive video installation “Agua” was projected onto a historic cultural monument: the Petroleum Securities Building in Downtown Los Angeles.
Abait’s works are held in private, public and corporate collections from the United States, Europe, Latin America and East Asia. She is the recipient of the 2016 Santa Monica Individual Artist Fellowship Award, the 2022 “Art Lives Here” Award by the Geffen Playhouse, the 2023 Counter Image printing grant, and the 2024 L.L. Stewart Fellowship by the Oregon State University.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Luciana Abait: On the Verge
April 26 – July 6, 2025
Museum of Art – DeLand, Downtown
100 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand, Florida 32720
Admission: Members Free | Future Members $5
The exhibition originated at the Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University.

Image: Luciana Abait, Pink Sky II, 2019, Photocollage, soft pastel and pencil on paper mounted on wood panel, 40 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist and Laband Art Gallery
