Portable Cow art piece available for instruction use

A transdisciplinary art piece that was the center of a series of events in February 2025 co-organized with Emily Morgan, associate professor of art history, is now part of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Portable Cow is an art piece developed to contain a miniature exhibit in a box, which includes maps, documents, farmer quotes, and photographs. It is a collaborative creation by Camille Bellet (DVM, MPH, Ph.D.), Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine The University of Manchester, U.K., and Liz Hingley, artist and anthropologist, along with designer Edwin Mingard. It was purchased with funds from the Center for Excellence in Arts and Humanities (CEAH). At the conclusion of the events last academic year, Emily Morgan donated the piece to SCUA in order tomake it available to a wider audience.  

Portable Cow emerged from a Wellcome Trust Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Science in 2020 in which Bellet used historical, ethnographic, and creative methodologies to research how new sensing technologies used in farming were transforming human-cow relationships. She collaborated with Liz Hingley, who brought her background in photography to the research, looking at how the circulation of digital images affects the way we understand and relate to the world, including non-human animals, specifically the use of closed-circuit cameras in barns. They created various visual representations of cows, reimagining the cow subject, and gathered all these representations into a lacquered box, co-designed with Edwin Mingard, made to represent the type of box that holds a cell phone. The cow thus becomes ‘portable’ through the use of digital media. The box and its contents present a playful toolkit for people to explore ideas around technology and farming.  

Portable Cow is now cataloged and available for use in Special Collections and University Archives. It may be of interest to a range of classes dealing with animals and agriculture and could be put in conversation with family farm and agricultural organization records held by SCUA. If you are interested in learning more about the piece or using it for a class, please contact Amy Bishop, rare books and manuscripts archivist.