The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem Massachusetts is a jewel in the crown of cultural institutions on the East Coast.  It is one of the oldest museums in the United States and is only a 30-minute drive from Boston.  Not only are its objects exquisite and the architecture magnificent and but also the PEM offers visitors a diverse collection ranging from the 18th century to today including: paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, textiles, architecture and decorative objects.  Its superb collections of African, American, Asian, Maritime, Korean, Japanese, Native American and Oceanic art provides visitors with insights into cultural diversity across time. It continuously assembles changing thematic exhibitions and displays of work by individual artists.

The Peabody Essex Museum and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art organized the new temporary exhibition In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting on view until 3^rd October.  Comprised of more than 90 paintings it focuses on the sea demonstrating how water with its transformative power, beauty, violence and mystery has enticed artists throughout time to grapple with its poetic complexity.  The exhibit contains varied works by such artists as Michele Felice Cornè, Fitz Henry Lane, Titian Ramsay Peale, Theresa Bernstein, Childe Hassam, Georgia O’Keeffe, Kay WalkingStick, Norman Rockwell, Arthur Dove, Hale Woodruff, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Valerie Hegarty, Stuart Davis, Kerry James Marshall and others, offering viewers an extensive interpretation about the subject of water. 

The cliché notion of paintings of the sea associated with the portrayal of ships and maritime symbols is debunked in this powerful display that chronologically takes the viewer across time depicting artists’ changing attitudes and interpretation of water and its significance in American culture and environment.  The show consists of topics portraying remote American whaling in winter, monumental ships, immigrants traveling to America in steerage class, United States exploring expeditions, and modern artists interests in light, color, form and storms.  Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History stated, “No matter where we live, the sea shapes all of our lives and continues to inspire some of the most exciting artists working today.”

This exhibition is timely and significant as we become more sensitive about climate change and an awareness of rising sea levels and the threat to coast communities.  Furthermore the sea not only is a valuable part of our food supply chain but also is essential to commerce. 

A second compelling exhibit at the PEM is If I With You Would Go by Scottish artist Susan Philipsz (below, left).  She initially began her career as a sculptor, though is now best known for her sound installations. Where her materials are now sound, time and space rather than stone, wood, marble or plaster.  In 2010 she was awarded the Turner Prize for her sound art entry ‘Lowlands’.  At the core of her unique sound installations is a focus on the immeasurable capabilities that sound has to sculpt both the physical space where it is released as well as its ability to conjure potent reminiscences.  The sound works are often created for particular locations and refer to their history and spatial features.

Philipsz’s project is part of “FreePort [No. 003],’’ a program at the PEM that offers contemporary artists an opportunity to interact with the museum’s collection and produce a new work.   She chose one of the oldest areas of the PEM, The East India Marine Hall that was built in 1825.  Philipsz was inspired by this vast historical neo-classical hall painted in Tucson yellow with long, arching windows at one end and hand-carved figureheads that ornamented mighty ships, likenesses of 18th-century ship captains and artifacts from distant sea journeys.

Perhaps when Philipsz visited the PEM’s hall the figurehead “Marie’’ circa 1870, that once ornamented the bow of the ship Marie, depicting a blond girl in a green frock with flowers in her hair, she associated this piece with the carpenter’s wife in the ballad she choose to fill hall. There is also a minute portrait of Captain Nehemiah Ingersoll Ingraham, dated around 1800 that she might have connected to the lost lover in the narrative of her work.

Right: Figurehead from the bark Marie, after 1875, Artist in Canada, Painted wood, 84 x 25 x26″. Gift of Robert E. Peabody and Mrs. Mary Peabody Scott in memory of Rober Swain Peabody, their father, 1968. PEM Collection

At the foundation of Philipsz’s work is her use of historical material.  This is a very intellectual art that requires much concentration. At the heart of Susan Philipsz’s ephemeral settings lay the countless possibilities of sound to sculpt one’s physical experience of space and the faint recollections of memories.  One must be willing to invest the time to listen to the narration she presents so to become exposed to something that is both absorbing and linked to another era.

For the most part the Marine Hall is an empty space that evinces a haunting atmosphere when Philipsz begins singing eight dissimilar versions of the traditional Scottish ballad “James Harris,” also called “The Daemon Lover.”  Her employment of song, and place aim to heighten one’s consciousness of space, emotion, and memory.  Quietly a story unfolds of a young married woman with a son who is enticed away to sea by a long lost lover, secretly the devil in human form.  He promises her love, adventure and wealth, as he seduces her on his ship that he quickly destroys with his cloven hoof, drowning the vessel and sending her to hell.

Phillipsz’s choice of ballad appropriately fits the history of the PEM’s East India Marine Hall (above, with speakers installed, far left, right). This is a work that addresses promise, romance and tragedy, all fitting topics echoing the mercantile and maritime history.  At the beginning of the piece’s cycle, one hears a chorus of voices from all around the gallery, singing different stanzas to the same melody.  Philipsz has recorded different lengths of the song that begin at different intervals and continuously play and then stop.  She shapes sound as a sculptor would physical materials, using recordings of her solo singing voice to define and articulate the space.  It is difficult to follow one lyric because one hears multiple voices coming from the 8 speakers carefully placed around the hall with each intoning simultaneously; it is difficult to follow one lyric—one can only pick up small snips of the poetic narrative.  As one exits this work one is left with a mysterious feeling yet with an unexpected serenity.

Lastly in the Wheatland Family Gallery next to the Marine Hall one discovers Anila Quayyum Agha’s luminous sculptural installation of light and shadow.  This work titled All the Flowers Are for Me represents a variation on Agha’s award-winning 2014 piece Intersections, which the Peabody showcased in 2016.   In the radiant space bathed in yellow light, a suspended laser-cut steel cube weighing 550 to 600 pounds hangs in the center of the gallery, lighted only from within by a solitary light bulb.   The central form casts intricate reflective large shadows in all directions onto the gallery walls, ceiling and floor, showering all surfaces and visitors in its amalgamating enlarged pattern akin to Mandala art.  The shapes on the walls of the cube are organic floral and foliate silhouettes that circle and swirl around the form like clinging vines.  Women in Pakistan who live under strict conservative restrictions inspired this installation.  The artist “describes this work as her effort to create a sense of how women can reclaim and safely open up private space to welcome others.”

It is a most appropriate installation from Agha who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan although now lives in the US.  The geometric design holds a great deal of symbolism in Hindu and Buddhist cultures as well as in the Middle East.  The form is akin to the “magic circle” in which circles are contained within a square and organized into sections that are all systematized around a single, central point.  According to the PEM, “Persian and Turkish architecture, textiles and miniature paintings inspire the precise, stylized floral forms that compose Anila Quayyum Agha’s sculptural chamber of light and shadow.”

This artist aspired to create a type of sanctuary or meditative place where one could feel safe. Having experienced exclusion in Pakistan, women being barred from mosques and cultural venues, Agha wanted her installation to be a welcoming place for all, no matter their gender, age, race, nationality or political affiliation. She is aware of the huge shifting political and social changes occurring around the world and the strife people are experiencing.  The illusory installation invites contemplation and is a successful accompaniment to Philipsz’s subtle sound work.  Both pieces require viewers to slow down in order to experience what is being presented and to be in the moment.

By Elaine A. King, Contributing Editor

Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, 161 Essex Street, Salem, MA:

American Waters: The Sea in American Painting on view until 3^rd October.

If I With You Would Go by Scottish artist Susan Philipsz.

Anila Quayyum Agha’s All the Flowers Are for Me