The moment you step through the mossy-green entrance to Sandy Skoglund’s Enchanting Nature, you are pulled into an alternate universe: felt-made figures with chicks perched on branches, a monochrome gray kitchen overrun by radioactive green cats, and a wavering blue bedroom where iridescent goldfish float like a dream.
This ethereal exhibition is the newest experience at the McNay Art Museum. From Sept. 11, 2025, through Feb. 1, 2026, the McNay welcomes Skoglund’s mystical, mind-bending works that blur the line between fiction and reality while probing the tensions between culture and nature. Through sculpture, installation, and photography, Enchanting Nature fully immerses visitors in Skoglund’s world.
The exhibition unfolds across three distinct spaces, debuting never-before-seen installations and reimagining works originally created as staged photography in the 1980s and 1990s.
Among the anchors are Radioactive Cats (1980) and Revenge of the Goldfish (1981), two of Skoglund’s most iconic pieces.
In Radioactive Cats, visitors step into a New York-style tenement kitchen overtaken by dozens of neon-green cats. The scene suggests resilience in the face of manmade environments — inviting comparisons to the dogs of Chernobyl, who survived nuclear disaster and adapted to new ecosystems.
Revenge of the Goldfish transforms a bedroom into an aquarium-like dreamscape. 119 handmade ceramic goldfish drift across the space, raising questions about human intervention in nature. Skoglund’s installation reframes these familiar pets as strange, overwhelming, even threatening presences.
Also featured is Fresh Hybrid (2008), a lush artificial landscape where pipe cleaners sprout like grass and chenille Easter chicks replace leaves on trees. Uprooted trunks with humanlike legs appear to dance, while plush figures wander among the foliage. Using ordinary craft materials, Skoglund makes nature uncanny again, prompting viewers to notice the overlooked abundance of their everyday environments and to reflect on blurred boundaries between human and animal, plant and machine, living and artificial, as well as loss of innocence.
Skoglund’s immersive sets are not illusions: she painted her own apartment entirely gray for Radioactive Cats and drenched a bedroom in blue for Revenge of the Goldfish. The painstaking detail behind each piece shows her commitment to creating dream worlds you can walk through.
Enchanting Nature isn’t just art to look at, it’s an invitation to step inside a surreal story, one that asks us to reconsider how we live with animals, objects, and each other. It reminds us that the line between the real and the imagined is fragile, and that both worlds reveal truths about our place in nature.
For San Antonio, it’s also a rare opportunity: to see career-defining works by one of the most influential installation artists of the late 20th century, alongside new creations being shown for the first time.
It’s a reminder that the McNay, rooted in San Antonio, continues to bring global perspectives to our community, shaping conversations that reach beyond the city.
THE VOICE:
Eve Slemp
Eve Slemp is a marketing and communication student at Trinity University, where she blends creativity with storytelling across multiple platforms. Originally from Connecticut, she moved to San Antonio for college and quickly embedded herself in the city’s cultural and media scene. Eve is currently an editorial content intern with Voice of San Antonio and serves as the arts editor for The Trinitonian, Trinity’s student-run newspaper. She works as a creative producer intern for Trinity’s marketing department, capturing campus life through photography and videography. She also interns with Giant Noise, an Austin-based PR firm, and previously worked with the Classical Music Institute as a development intern. With a deep love for writing, film, and literature, Eve hopes to one day write a novel and break into the film industry as a screenwriter or creative producer. She’s especially drawn to stories that explore identity, memory, and the strange beauty in the everyday.