October 24, 2018
Nature's Nation:
American Art and Environment
Karl Kusserow
John Wilmerding Curator of American Art,
Princeton University Art Museum
Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the 77th Year
On October 24, 2018, at 10:15 a.m., President Julia Coale called the seventh meeting of the 77th year of the Old Guard to order. Joan Fleming led the invocation. Lincoln Hollister presented the minutes from the October 18, meeting. President Coale made several announcements. A number of members had guests and only one, Dick Hespos, introduced his wife, Jill, a prospective member. President Coale then announced that in the interest of time the remaining six guests were asked to stand for an Old Guard welcome, but were not individually introduced. [These included members Jim Ferry (guests, George McLaughlin, MD, and Frank McNally), Helena Bienstock (guest, Martha Otis), Scott McVay (guest, his wife, Hella), Ruth Scott (guest, Peter Bienstock), and John Tiebout (guest, Mary Tiebout).] 108 Old Guard members plus guests attended the meeting.
Bob Altman, Chairman of the Membership Committee, announced the roster of proposed members whose biographies will soon be forwarded to the membership—Ann Damsgaard, John Davidson, Julianne Elward-Berry, Robert Good, Jill Hespos, Andrew Littauer, Edward Rosenblum, and Fong Wei. The election of this group will be held at the next Old Guard meeting, October 31, at 10:15 in the Friends Center, when Jacob Schapiro will present “Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict.”
Marge D’Amico introduced our speaker, Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, at the Princeton University Art Museum, who came to the university in 2005 and was appointed to the named curatorship in 2013. He received his BA from Wesleyan and PhD from Yale. Kusserow specializes in American art with a particular focus on portraiture as well as eco-criticism. Fortunately for Old Guard members, Marge provided an accessible framework for us by defining “eco-criticism” as a critical theory examining how artists have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding, while simultaneously contributing to development of modern ecological consciousness.
Dr. Kusserow presented an illustrated talk centered on the current exhibition at the University Art Museum, Nature’s Nation: American Art and the Environment, which reframes more than 300 years of diverse artistic practice in North America, from the colonial period to the present by examining, for the first time, this art through the lens of eco-criticism. This ambitious exhibition, seven years in the making, was co-curated with Alan C. Braddock, (Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History at William and Mary College). The show has taken over and transformed much of the museum’s gallery spaces and includes 120 works lent by 70 institutions and individuals. As museum director James Stewart wrote in the fall 2018 museum magazine, “Nature’s Nation comes at a moment when our relationship to the world around us—and our understanding of human life as part of the natural world—is subject to increased scrutiny. Drawing on the tools of eco-criticism… Nature’s Nation posits rich, complicated, and at times probably uncomfortable readings of great works of art.”
The lecture began, not with images from American art, but rather Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel decoration of God creating Adam, illustrating Genesis, “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth,” and then instructs humans to “subdue” it and “have dominion over the fish of the sea… the birds... livestock… over every creeping thing.” This image was paired with a portrait of the 17th century English philosopher John Locke, who said “In the beginning all the world was America,” by which he meant a pristine land filled with occupied by only nature and “unpeopled,” though we know that was not really accurate. These juxtaposed images bookend the two Euro-American perspectives, informing for centuries ideas of Nation and Nature in America. Kusserow’s and Braddock's exhibition interrogates these assumptions.
One of the first paintings Kusserow acquired when he began at Princeton was 1833 oil by Robert Weir depicting the Greenwich Boat Club and their outing at the Jersey Shore. He took us through various art historical analyses that have evolved over the last several centuries to understand an eco-critical interpretation of the artwork that s in the exhibition. Traditional art historical interpretation of the work would begin with connoisseurship examining the skill of the artist and the context within his body of work, but a mid-20th century art historical interpretation would view it within terms of social history identifying bourgeois people participating in Jacksonian America. In the 1970s, as art history was being transformed by the social upheavals of the 1970s, a gendered reading informed by feminism would wonder why no women are included in the scene. But in the 21st century we now examine the painting in environmental terms and recognize that the painting would not have existed had not the Cholera Epidemic of 1832 occurred and from which these men were fleeing, though they left the women behind. In the first decades of the 19th century, people wrongly thought that the disease was airborne and the best way to escape getting sick was to leave Greenwich Village temporarily to live in New Jersey. When compared with Weir’s most famous painting, Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1843), there is a similar compositional device of an enshrouding sail in both works that provides a sense of protection-- in one, from the encroaching disease and in the other, from persecution. The Princeton-based painting exists and looks like it does because of something environmental; looking at works of art from this perspective helps us understand them and see in a more expanded way.
The exhibition is structured chronologically after the viewers enter the introductory gallery where they can begin to learn about visual culture from an ecological point of view. For example, we were shown images of an 18th century Philadelphia chest of drawers juxtaposed with Color Field artist Morris Louis’ painting, Intrigue (1954). Kusserow’s analysis of both objects was instructive and provided nuanced readings of each as he discussed looking at the materials used to make art. For example, the chest of drawers was made from mahogany harvested in Jamaica by slaves. After the mahogany was deforested, the slaves were then shipped to Honduras leading to the expansion of slavery. Louis worked with turpentine to dilute his paint so he could pour it rather than using a brush, a technique he learned from Helen Frankenthaler, a somewhat neglected artist because of her gender. In so doing he inhaled its toxic chemicals causing his early demise from lung cancer. He chose to inhale and use turpentine. Yet in Dorothea Lange’s photograph of "enslaved" workers harvesting groves to produce the product, the people did not have any choice or protection from the fumes. Thus, this approach and analysis leads to notions of environmental justice, where various social classes and genders experience the environment differently through their roles and the amount of power they have.
Given that the curators were mounting an exhibition about ecology and the environment, they decided that they must insure that the show, itself, and its installation would be eco-friendly and be as green as possible. They made a concerted effort to leave the least amount of carbon footprint when considering the transportation of such a large number of works, including their packing crates. In designing the installation they selected UV rather than halogen lights; recycled walls; and selected eco-friendly paint. The catalogue was printed close by in Rhode Island, rather than far away in Europe, to avoid shipping crates, and the press used wind turbines, rather than electricity, to power its equipment. Thus, the ecology of the exhibit exemplified the ethos of its content.
We were shown many other objects from the exhibit that exemplified the breakdown into three chronological sections: Colonization and Empire, Industrialization and Conservation, and Ecology and Environmentalism.
Among the works shown were ones by familiar artists from the Hudson River School and later 19th century nature painters, such as Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran (whose work influenced the creation of Yellowstone Park). Another painting from the University collection shows us a seascape by the Luminous painter Fitzhugh Lane. Unlike the heroic vision of the landscape painter, the artist shows us a mundane scene of a foggy harbor. He wants us to see that the relationships between the sun, tide, fog, temperature, and air interrelate. These landscape painters underscored that nature was a fragile thing. Now centuries later, we recognize the impact on nature by humans and technology that has lead us to our current ecological crisis.
The curators’ selection of works also represents a determined effort to be much more inclusive than earlier exhibitions. There are a number of art works by African American and indigenous artists on view. For example, the curators paired the Moran with another rendering of the same scene by African American artist Grafton Tyler Brown that was more intimate, and then included another African American landscape artist, Robert Scott Duncanson, who included figures with red, white, and brown skin tones in the background. He had a different perspective and conception of the environment than his peers, perhaps an environment in which there was racial harmony. His family was not ever able to see the work on exhibit in their hometown of Cincinnati because Blacks were excluded from museum admission.
A work by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is one of several Native American works in the show and provides viewers with the perspectives of indigenous peoples. Kusserow discussed her Browning of America (2000). Smith celebrates the demographic shift currently underway, where brown people will be in the majority of the population, by rendering a map of the U.S. stained in an earth tone-browning of the people and the land. Smith reasserts the indigenous presence with pictographs and a list, from her perspective, of the invading tribes from Europe kept offshore to the East. Smith is also an artist concerned with environmental degradation and trauma. Approaches to nature by Native Americans are more conducive to environmental health.
A beautiful photograph of caribou migration in northern Alaska by Subhankar Banerjee, a Southeast Asian environmental activist, contradicts ideas that that region is a barren wasteland, where the U.S. government plans to drill for oil. When this work was first slated to be included in a major exhibit at the Smithsonian, the show was caught up in Congressional petro-politics. It was downsized and installed in a small basement room, deleting the explanatory text—a victim of government censorship. Nature isn’t just about people, as Genesis implied, it is always about the rest of life on earth.
The second section of the show included renderings of the impact of large-scale industries, such as oil drilling, on the environment. In a sequence of images that focused on the most American icon, the buffalo, we saw a photograph of a huge mound of buffalo skulls referring to their demise due to over-hunting by Anglo Americans who wanted to bring a faster end to the Plains Indians. The indigenous people depended on the animal for food, clothing, and shelter and there is a beautifully decorated buffalo hide by an anonymous Lakota Sioux woman, showing the resilience of the people, even to Standing Rock.
The Dust Bowl was the first real ecological cataclysm in American history and was human induced. Its impact went well beyond the local to large parts of the country. Early twentieth century artists recognized that these changes were increasing. Dorothea Lange’s well-known image of migrant workers documents the impact of this disaster on human beings. Yet her contemporary, Georgia O’Keeffe, consciously wants us to see nonhuman life with respect and attention in "Lawrence Tree," her painting of one tree seen from a worm’s-eye view.
The last section of the show expands the effect of ecology beyond the regional to global. There is no pristine or nonhuman place left. Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s EXIT is a video installation informed by data that shows that the massive scale of migration now and in the future is a problem of environmental justice and a challenge for artists. Edward Burtynsky’s 2010 photograph of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, international waters, reminds us that oil will not respect geopolitical boundaries, but will impact life in the sea. Ecology and nature are not about nation states, but rather about the ebb ands flow across borders.
The overarching theme of the exhibit is to demonstrate how the world around us and our conception and ecological consciousness have changed since the 18th century in a 180-degree manner over the ensuing three centuries, from a static immutable God-given world to one characterized by change and increasing human agency in it. Dr. Kusserow is optimistic that there will be a recurrence of activism, informed by Earth Day of the 1970s, to lead us into the future.
During the Q & A, Dr. Kusserow was asked about artists’ interventions into global warming and an impactful work of art: an ice cube left melting near the Louvre’s Pyramid—a subtle reminder that we need science, as well as the humanities to come to terms with ecological issues.
He was asked how the show evolved––from a concept or a list of images? He explained about his collaboration with Dr. Braddock to provide an alternative history of American art. This required him to learn about environmental history and ecological thought, while culling down a checklist of 500 objects for the final exhibition.
Another Old Guard member wondered if the show would be traveling. It will go to the Peabody Essex Museum, near Boston; and then next summer it will move to Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, where it will have the potential to reach several hundred thousand visitors.
The last question related to expansion of the museum. The world-renowned Ghanaian architect, David Adjaye, has been engaged to redesign and enlarge the building; funds have already been raised, though more is needed; and the University is in support of the project. The museum will probably be closed for three years, beginning in 2020.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferris Olin
Bob Altman, Chairman of the Membership Committee, announced the roster of proposed members whose biographies will soon be forwarded to the membership—Ann Damsgaard, John Davidson, Julianne Elward-Berry, Robert Good, Jill Hespos, Andrew Littauer, Edward Rosenblum, and Fong Wei. The election of this group will be held at the next Old Guard meeting, October 31, at 10:15 in the Friends Center, when Jacob Schapiro will present “Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict.”
Marge D’Amico introduced our speaker, Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, at the Princeton University Art Museum, who came to the university in 2005 and was appointed to the named curatorship in 2013. He received his BA from Wesleyan and PhD from Yale. Kusserow specializes in American art with a particular focus on portraiture as well as eco-criticism. Fortunately for Old Guard members, Marge provided an accessible framework for us by defining “eco-criticism” as a critical theory examining how artists have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding, while simultaneously contributing to development of modern ecological consciousness.
Dr. Kusserow presented an illustrated talk centered on the current exhibition at the University Art Museum, Nature’s Nation: American Art and the Environment, which reframes more than 300 years of diverse artistic practice in North America, from the colonial period to the present by examining, for the first time, this art through the lens of eco-criticism. This ambitious exhibition, seven years in the making, was co-curated with Alan C. Braddock, (Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History at William and Mary College). The show has taken over and transformed much of the museum’s gallery spaces and includes 120 works lent by 70 institutions and individuals. As museum director James Stewart wrote in the fall 2018 museum magazine, “Nature’s Nation comes at a moment when our relationship to the world around us—and our understanding of human life as part of the natural world—is subject to increased scrutiny. Drawing on the tools of eco-criticism… Nature’s Nation posits rich, complicated, and at times probably uncomfortable readings of great works of art.”
The lecture began, not with images from American art, but rather Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel decoration of God creating Adam, illustrating Genesis, “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth,” and then instructs humans to “subdue” it and “have dominion over the fish of the sea… the birds... livestock… over every creeping thing.” This image was paired with a portrait of the 17th century English philosopher John Locke, who said “In the beginning all the world was America,” by which he meant a pristine land filled with occupied by only nature and “unpeopled,” though we know that was not really accurate. These juxtaposed images bookend the two Euro-American perspectives, informing for centuries ideas of Nation and Nature in America. Kusserow’s and Braddock's exhibition interrogates these assumptions.
One of the first paintings Kusserow acquired when he began at Princeton was 1833 oil by Robert Weir depicting the Greenwich Boat Club and their outing at the Jersey Shore. He took us through various art historical analyses that have evolved over the last several centuries to understand an eco-critical interpretation of the artwork that s in the exhibition. Traditional art historical interpretation of the work would begin with connoisseurship examining the skill of the artist and the context within his body of work, but a mid-20th century art historical interpretation would view it within terms of social history identifying bourgeois people participating in Jacksonian America. In the 1970s, as art history was being transformed by the social upheavals of the 1970s, a gendered reading informed by feminism would wonder why no women are included in the scene. But in the 21st century we now examine the painting in environmental terms and recognize that the painting would not have existed had not the Cholera Epidemic of 1832 occurred and from which these men were fleeing, though they left the women behind. In the first decades of the 19th century, people wrongly thought that the disease was airborne and the best way to escape getting sick was to leave Greenwich Village temporarily to live in New Jersey. When compared with Weir’s most famous painting, Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1843), there is a similar compositional device of an enshrouding sail in both works that provides a sense of protection-- in one, from the encroaching disease and in the other, from persecution. The Princeton-based painting exists and looks like it does because of something environmental; looking at works of art from this perspective helps us understand them and see in a more expanded way.
The exhibition is structured chronologically after the viewers enter the introductory gallery where they can begin to learn about visual culture from an ecological point of view. For example, we were shown images of an 18th century Philadelphia chest of drawers juxtaposed with Color Field artist Morris Louis’ painting, Intrigue (1954). Kusserow’s analysis of both objects was instructive and provided nuanced readings of each as he discussed looking at the materials used to make art. For example, the chest of drawers was made from mahogany harvested in Jamaica by slaves. After the mahogany was deforested, the slaves were then shipped to Honduras leading to the expansion of slavery. Louis worked with turpentine to dilute his paint so he could pour it rather than using a brush, a technique he learned from Helen Frankenthaler, a somewhat neglected artist because of her gender. In so doing he inhaled its toxic chemicals causing his early demise from lung cancer. He chose to inhale and use turpentine. Yet in Dorothea Lange’s photograph of "enslaved" workers harvesting groves to produce the product, the people did not have any choice or protection from the fumes. Thus, this approach and analysis leads to notions of environmental justice, where various social classes and genders experience the environment differently through their roles and the amount of power they have.
Given that the curators were mounting an exhibition about ecology and the environment, they decided that they must insure that the show, itself, and its installation would be eco-friendly and be as green as possible. They made a concerted effort to leave the least amount of carbon footprint when considering the transportation of such a large number of works, including their packing crates. In designing the installation they selected UV rather than halogen lights; recycled walls; and selected eco-friendly paint. The catalogue was printed close by in Rhode Island, rather than far away in Europe, to avoid shipping crates, and the press used wind turbines, rather than electricity, to power its equipment. Thus, the ecology of the exhibit exemplified the ethos of its content.
We were shown many other objects from the exhibit that exemplified the breakdown into three chronological sections: Colonization and Empire, Industrialization and Conservation, and Ecology and Environmentalism.
Among the works shown were ones by familiar artists from the Hudson River School and later 19th century nature painters, such as Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran (whose work influenced the creation of Yellowstone Park). Another painting from the University collection shows us a seascape by the Luminous painter Fitzhugh Lane. Unlike the heroic vision of the landscape painter, the artist shows us a mundane scene of a foggy harbor. He wants us to see that the relationships between the sun, tide, fog, temperature, and air interrelate. These landscape painters underscored that nature was a fragile thing. Now centuries later, we recognize the impact on nature by humans and technology that has lead us to our current ecological crisis.
The curators’ selection of works also represents a determined effort to be much more inclusive than earlier exhibitions. There are a number of art works by African American and indigenous artists on view. For example, the curators paired the Moran with another rendering of the same scene by African American artist Grafton Tyler Brown that was more intimate, and then included another African American landscape artist, Robert Scott Duncanson, who included figures with red, white, and brown skin tones in the background. He had a different perspective and conception of the environment than his peers, perhaps an environment in which there was racial harmony. His family was not ever able to see the work on exhibit in their hometown of Cincinnati because Blacks were excluded from museum admission.
A work by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is one of several Native American works in the show and provides viewers with the perspectives of indigenous peoples. Kusserow discussed her Browning of America (2000). Smith celebrates the demographic shift currently underway, where brown people will be in the majority of the population, by rendering a map of the U.S. stained in an earth tone-browning of the people and the land. Smith reasserts the indigenous presence with pictographs and a list, from her perspective, of the invading tribes from Europe kept offshore to the East. Smith is also an artist concerned with environmental degradation and trauma. Approaches to nature by Native Americans are more conducive to environmental health.
A beautiful photograph of caribou migration in northern Alaska by Subhankar Banerjee, a Southeast Asian environmental activist, contradicts ideas that that region is a barren wasteland, where the U.S. government plans to drill for oil. When this work was first slated to be included in a major exhibit at the Smithsonian, the show was caught up in Congressional petro-politics. It was downsized and installed in a small basement room, deleting the explanatory text—a victim of government censorship. Nature isn’t just about people, as Genesis implied, it is always about the rest of life on earth.
The second section of the show included renderings of the impact of large-scale industries, such as oil drilling, on the environment. In a sequence of images that focused on the most American icon, the buffalo, we saw a photograph of a huge mound of buffalo skulls referring to their demise due to over-hunting by Anglo Americans who wanted to bring a faster end to the Plains Indians. The indigenous people depended on the animal for food, clothing, and shelter and there is a beautifully decorated buffalo hide by an anonymous Lakota Sioux woman, showing the resilience of the people, even to Standing Rock.
The Dust Bowl was the first real ecological cataclysm in American history and was human induced. Its impact went well beyond the local to large parts of the country. Early twentieth century artists recognized that these changes were increasing. Dorothea Lange’s well-known image of migrant workers documents the impact of this disaster on human beings. Yet her contemporary, Georgia O’Keeffe, consciously wants us to see nonhuman life with respect and attention in "Lawrence Tree," her painting of one tree seen from a worm’s-eye view.
The last section of the show expands the effect of ecology beyond the regional to global. There is no pristine or nonhuman place left. Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s EXIT is a video installation informed by data that shows that the massive scale of migration now and in the future is a problem of environmental justice and a challenge for artists. Edward Burtynsky’s 2010 photograph of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, international waters, reminds us that oil will not respect geopolitical boundaries, but will impact life in the sea. Ecology and nature are not about nation states, but rather about the ebb ands flow across borders.
The overarching theme of the exhibit is to demonstrate how the world around us and our conception and ecological consciousness have changed since the 18th century in a 180-degree manner over the ensuing three centuries, from a static immutable God-given world to one characterized by change and increasing human agency in it. Dr. Kusserow is optimistic that there will be a recurrence of activism, informed by Earth Day of the 1970s, to lead us into the future.
During the Q & A, Dr. Kusserow was asked about artists’ interventions into global warming and an impactful work of art: an ice cube left melting near the Louvre’s Pyramid—a subtle reminder that we need science, as well as the humanities to come to terms with ecological issues.
He was asked how the show evolved––from a concept or a list of images? He explained about his collaboration with Dr. Braddock to provide an alternative history of American art. This required him to learn about environmental history and ecological thought, while culling down a checklist of 500 objects for the final exhibition.
Another Old Guard member wondered if the show would be traveling. It will go to the Peabody Essex Museum, near Boston; and then next summer it will move to Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, where it will have the potential to reach several hundred thousand visitors.
The last question related to expansion of the museum. The world-renowned Ghanaian architect, David Adjaye, has been engaged to redesign and enlarge the building; funds have already been raised, though more is needed; and the University is in support of the project. The museum will probably be closed for three years, beginning in 2020.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferris Olin