William Wegman: Funney/Strange, the first retrospective of Wegman’s work to appear in over fifteen years, opened last week at the Brooklyn Museum. Best known and beloved for signature photographs of his troupe of weimeraners, Wegman is also an immensely important figure in the contemporary art world. The exhibition reveals the full range of the artist’s achievements as a pioneer video-maker, conceptualist, performer, photographer, painter, draftsman, and writer, in whose creations the light humor of “funny” mediates the darker human comedy of “strange.”

“[D]ogs or no dogs,” runs the New York Times’ review of the exhibition, “Mr. Wegman is one of the most important artists to emerge from the heady experiments of the 1970’s.” The works on display in the exhibition “offer a total immersion in the fruits of his inquiring mind and sardonic eye. They anoint him as the most accessible and, in his own way, richly human of all Conceptual artists.”

“[T]he energetic mixing of media,” the review continues, “enables you to follow Mr. Wegman’s ideas as they migrate from one form to another….Best of all, this show proves that there is much, much more to his achievement than dogs.”

William Wegman: Funney/Strange continues at the Brooklyn Museum until May 28. The catalog to the exhibition is published by Yale University Press.