Cabin Fever

Library of Congress; The Crowley

Dorothea Lange, "Home of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, California," 1938

Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Cabin Fever traces the tradition of the cabin in Canada and the United States—from the settlement of the frontier to the contemporary depictions feverishly circulated across the Internet—showing how this humble architectural form has been appropriated for its symbolic value and helped shape a larger cultural identity. The exhibition title is borrowed from the idiomatic expression for an anxious state of mind resulting from a prolonged stay in a remote or confined place. But it also plays upon the more consumer-driven definition of “fever:” a contagious, usually transient, fascination with an object of desire. Cabin Fever will offer a historical and cultural survey of the cabin in North America, an acknowledgement of the pervasive influence of this typology. Not only has the cabin survived in various forms and iterations, but it also has resonated deeply in our cultural psyche.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Jennifer M. Volland, Guest Curator, Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator and Stepahanie Rebick, Associate Curator