'Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment' premieres October 13 in Princeton

Distributed September 12, 2018

300 YEARS OF AMERICAN ART REINTERPRETED IN MAJOR EXHIBITION ORGANIZED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM

Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment premieres Oct. 13 in Princeton before national tour

PRINCETON, N.J. – This fall, the story of our changing relationship with the natural world will be comprehensively told through a groundbreaking exhibition encompassing three centuries of American art. Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment presents more than 120 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, videos and works of decorative art, from the colonial period to the present, exploring for the first time how American artists of different traditions and backgrounds have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding while contributing to the development of a modern ecological consciousness.

       This sweeping exhibition engages a wide range of genres and historical contexts – from colonial furniture to the art of Jeffersonian natural science, from Hudson River landscape painting to Native American basketry, from Dust Bowl regionalism to modernist abstraction and postwar environmental activism – highlighting the evolving ecological implications of subjects and contexts of creation as well as artistic materials and techniques. The result is a major reinterpretation of American art that examines both iconic masterpieces and rarely seen objects through a lens uniting art historical interpretation with environmental history, scientific analysis and the dynamic field of ecocriticism.

“Nature’s Nation advances a new approach to understanding and interpreting American art of the past three centuries, opening up rich avenues of engagement with both celebrated and less familiar works of art,” said James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “At a time when the question of our relationship with the natural world is so much on our minds, Nature’s Nation positions the museum as a crucial site for close looking, conversation and exchange on questions that matter both to our identities as Americans and to our future.”

       The exhibition is the culmination of years of innovative research by co-curators Karl Kusserow, the John Wilmerding Curator of American Art at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Alan C. Braddock, the Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History and American Studies at William & Mary. To help rethink American art history in environmental terms, they have selected works by more than 100 artists, including John James Audubon, George Bellows, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, Theaster Gates, Winslow Homer, Louisa Keyser, Dorothea Lange, Ana Mendieta, Thomas Moran, Isamu Noguchi, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Lin, Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Willson Peale, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Alexis Rockman, Robert Smithson, Carleton Watkins and Andrew Wyeth.

       Nature’s Nation begins with an introductory gallery, where iconic paintings by Albert Bierstadt (Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite, ca. 1871-73) and Thomas Moran (Lower Falls, Yellowstone Park, 1893) are displayed alongside works by Valerie Hegarty (Fallen Bierstadt, 2007) and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Browning of America, 2000) that revise and complicate earlier perceptions of the pristine American environment. The fifteen diverse works in the introduction set the stage for the following sections, which together reveal our evolving sense of what nature means and how we as humans relate to it.

       The first, Colonization and Empire, focuses on images of the young Republic’s ideas about natural order, as seen in Charles Willson Peale’s renowned The Artist in His Museum (1822), before exploring picturesque and sublime representations of the land in paintings such as Thomas Cole’s Home in the Woods (1847), and Americans’ plans for nature’s transformation, as in Frederick Law Olmsted’s enormous Central Park “Greensward Plan” (1858).

       A second section, Industrialization and Conservation, explores work that addresses the tensions between progress and preservation, including complex representations of consumption and its effects by Winslow Homer (Prisoners from the Front, 1866), Thomas Anshutz (The Ironworker’s Noontime, 1880) and a Standing Rock Sioux artist (a stretched buffalo robe of 1882). 

       Finally, Ecology and Environmentalism considers art of the 20th and 21st centuries that reimagines ecology on a global scale through expansive techniques and media. Among the works featured are Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic The Lawrence Tree (1929) and Robert Rauschenberg’s lithographic collage announcing the first Earth Day (1970). 

       “The Museum is grateful to the many institutions and funders who enthusiastically supported this innovative new vision of North American history and culture,” Steward said. Lenders include 70 eminent national collections, both private and public, as well as works drawn from Princeton’s extensive holdings.

       After its debut at Princeton (Oct. 13, 2018-Jan. 6, 2019), the exhibition travels to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (Feb. 2-May 5, 2019), and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas (May 25-Sept. 9, 2019).

PUBLICATION

       A major 448-page catalogue, published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. In addition to essays by the curators, it features contributions by 13 distinguished scholars and artists in a variety of fields, including art historians Rachael DeLue and Robin Kelsey, artists Mark Dion and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and environmental theorists Timothy Morton and Rob Nixon.

RELATED PROGRAMMING
Opening Celebration | Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment
Saturday, Oct. 13
5 p.m., Lecture by exhibition curators, “Exhibiting Nature’s Nation: Ecology and Environment in American Art,” 10 McCosh Hall, followed by reception in Museum
 

Lecture | Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben
Thursday, Oct. 25, 5:30 p.m.
Princeton University, Richardson Auditorium, followed by reception in Museum

Film Screening and Discussion | Through the Repellent Fence, with members of subject arts collective, Postcommodity
Friday, Nov. 9, 2 p.m.
Princeton Garden Theatre

Author and Environmentalist Naomi Klein, in conversation with activist scholar Ashley Dawson (CUNY)
Thursday, Nov. 15, 5:30 p.m.
Princeton University, 50 McCosh Hall

Gallery Talk | Indigenous Belongings and Belonging with India Young
Friday, Nov. 16, 2 p.m.
Princeton University Art Museum, Nature’s Nation galleries 

Artist Alexis Rockman, in conversation with exhibition co-curator Alan Braddock
Thursday, Nov. 29, 5:30 p.m.
Princeton University, location TBD

Panel | Princeton Environmental Institute Faculty Response to Nature’s Nation, moderated by exhibition co-curator Karl Kusserow
Friday, Nov. 30, 2 p.m.
Princeton University Art Museum

Symposium | Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective, international symposium organized by exhibition co-curator Karl Kusserow
Friday, Dec. 7 and Saturday, Dec. 8
Princeton University, 10 McCosh Hall

 
SUPPORT
Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment has been made possible with leadership support from Shelly Malkin, Class of 1986, and Tony Malkin; Annette Merle-Smith; the Henry Luce Foundation; the Princeton Environmental Institute; and the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Generous support has been provided by the Humanities Council, the Dean for Research Innovation Fund, and the Humanities Council’s David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant, Princeton University; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Further support has been provided by Susan and John Diekman, Class of 1965; the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; Stacey Roth Goergen, Class of 1990, and Robert B. Goergen; the High Meadows Foundation Sustainability Fund; the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Partners and Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum.

 
MEDIA EVENT
Thursday, Sept. 20 at 11 a.m. Princeton Club of New York 15 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036  
To attend, RSVP to Erin Firestone at efirestone@princeton.edu or 609-258-3767 by Sept. 14.

ABOUT THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
With a collecting history that extends back to 1755, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading university art museums in the country, with collections that have grown to include over 100,000 works of art ranging from ancient to contemporary art and spanning the globe.
 

Committed to advancing Princeton’s teaching and research missions, the Art Museum also serves as a gateway to the University for visitors from around the world. Intimate in scale yet expansive in scope, the Museum offers a respite from the rush of daily life, a revitalizing experience of extraordinary works of art and an opportunity to delve deeply into the study of art and culture.
 

The Princeton University Art Museum is located at the heart of the Princeton campus, a short walk from the shops and restaurants of Nassau Street. Admission is free. Museum hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. The Museum is closed Mondays and major holidays.  

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Please direct image requests to Erin Firestone, Manager of Marketing and Public Relations, Princeton University Art Museum, at (609) 258-3767 or efirestone@princeton.edu.