If it’s September, it’s réttir, or sheep round up time in Iceland. Some 800,000 of the Norwegian-Icelandic variety (short legged and densely coated) are let out to pasture in late spring to freely roam, untended and unfenced, in the pastures and hillsides of the verdant Icelandic landscape. There, they graze for months on an abundant diet of sheep’s sorel, mountain avens, blueberries and broad leaf grasses. Nurturing, fresh water mountain streams crisscross virtually every open field. Sure-footed and affable, they can be seen, clustered in small groups—almost always a ram and 3-5 ewes—beside the country’s roadways or spotted in the distance as minuscule white dots, high on the sloping mountain ranges. A motorist is more likely to encounter a sheep crossing the highway, than any other kind of wildlife. Such unwarranted encounters are rare, though, because in the vast, open landscape, highway visibility can extend for miles.
The newly published work by photographer/author, Jennifer Packard, Enraptured by Raptors, offers a most welcome, positively uplifting saga. In an unlikely stroke, its action centers around the recent real life of a family of red- shouldered hawks; it is replete with wonders of discovery, raptors’ behavior and activities that we can actually relate to, and an encouragingly heartwarming response to it all, by an urban Wahington, D.C. community.
Hemmed in by Covid19 strictures that keep us apart,
creative people have discovered imaginative new ways to connect. Drive-in movies (remember those, Boomers?)
are enjoying new popularity, providing safe social distancing along with the
community experience movie fans crave.
The Metropolitan Opera’s recent “Gala” featured its major
artists—singers, orchestra, chorus—in Zoom performances that gave opera lovers
fascinating glimpses into the talents and personalities of favorite performers.
Dance wizard Mark Morris has been conducting Zoom rehearsals with his troupe,
and a piece he originally choreographed for this summer’s Tanglewood Festival
has now been reimagined as a video entitled “Lonely Waltz” that streams on his
website. (markmorrisdancegroup.org)
Artists have also joined the virtual fray. In partnership with the Art Production Fund, artist Nancy Baker Cahill launched an “Augmented Reality” animation entitled Liberty Bell on July 4th. The Fund’s Executive Director, Casey Fremont, explained that the idea was to give viewers “the opportunity to reflect upon their personal experiences of liberty, injustice, and inequality” by displaying this prime symbol of American Independence.
“Liberty Bell,” AR drawing geolocated at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Photo by Joy Asico/BFA.com courtesy of Art Production Fund, Washington D.C.
The work is accessible by Baker’s free “4th
Wall” app, and a viewer simply aims a cell phone at the intended site for the
bell to appear. There are six Liberty
Bell sites: in Boston where the Tea Party occurred, at Fort Tilden in
Queens, Fort Sumter in Charleston, the “Rocky Steps” leading to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art,” the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and the Lincoln
Memorial’s Reflecting Pool in the nation’s capital. In Washington, the bell
animation takes up 37,000 square feet and is composed of red, white, and blue
ribbons that seem to be unraveling. A soundtrack accompanying the AR features a
bell ringing from a lulling sound to something much more urgent. (https://nancybakercahill.com/4th-wall-ar-app)
The appearance of Liberty Bell on the National Mall made me think about how the Mall
serves as a platform for all kinds of expression—for national celebrations, for
protests, and as a canvas for art.
When George Washington instructed Pierre L’Enfant to
design the Federal City in 1791, L’Enfant envisioned a “grand avenue” lined by
gardens and stretching from the proposed Capitol to an equestrian statue of
George Washington that would be placed south of the President’s House. In 1802, a map described the grand avenue as
“the Mall”—a tip-of-the-hat to London’s Mall, where people promenaded
fashionably near Buckingham Palace.
America’s Mall had a haphazard look until the 1902 “McMillan Plan” (left). Inspired by the “city beautiful movement” of the late nineteenth century, McMillan extended L’Enfant’s Mall further west and removed a conglomeration of unrelated structures—including greenhouses, a railroad station, and a Central Market—and replaced the clutter with an open expanse of grass lined by four rows of American elm trees. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Mall has been festooned by Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery of Art, and a growing armada of memorials commemorating iconic national figures (Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, Martin Luther King), and wars (Korea, Vietnam, World War II).
Civil Rights Movement: The March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Colourized from a black and white, 35mm film negative. Jordan J Lloyd/Dynamichrome image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
The Mall is the site for celebrations like
presidential inaugurations, Fourth of July fireworks, and the National Cherry
Blossom Festival. It has also served as the rallying platform for such major
national events as Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert, Dr. King’s March on
Washington in 1963, and a major anti-Vietnam protest in 1972.
But the National Mall has also emerged as a stage for creative expression. There are permanent art installations in both the Hirshhorn Museum and National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Gardens, but there have also been several temporary artworks showcased. In 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt (left. Photo: Richard Latoff), was displayed in a massive showcase of 2,000 panels created by family and friends of those who had died of AIDS.
In 2012, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
commissioned Doug Aitken to create a video work that illuminated the entire
façade of the building, transforming it into “liquid architecture” by using
eleven high-definition video projectors that splayed across the museum’s curved
exterior. Entitled “SONG 1,” the video
was accompanied by an “urban soundscape” that featured the 1934 Harry Warren-Al
Dubin song “I Only Have Eyes for You,” originally composed for the Warner Bros.
film Dames. The Aitken projection was visible on the Mall
from sunset to midnight, March 22 to May 20, 2012.
In October 2014, the National Portrait Gallery contributed the next major work of Mall art. Nik Apostolides, then Associate Director of the Gallery, persuaded Cuban American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada to create one his enormous “facescapes” on the Mall (right). Rodriguez-Gerada photographed 30 anonymous young men of all races and blended them into an enormous composite portrait that stretched over six acres at the base of the Washington Monument. Calling his portrait “Out of Many, One,” the artist required 2,500 tons of sand and 800 tons of topsoil to create a vast face that was viewed from the top of the Washington Monument. He explained, “My art aims to create a dialogue about the concept of identity, and it questions the role models who are chosen to represent us in the public sphere. These works have no negative environmental impact and are created to poetically blend back into the land.”
In July 2019, the National Air & Space Museum celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission by projecting a 363-foot image of the Saturn V rocket onto the Washington Monument (left). On two nights, a 17-minute projection called “Apollo 50: Go for the Moon” recreated the launch of the Apollo 11 mission that took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon.
Sponsored by the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, Nancy Baker Cahill’s Liberty Bell (below, with hands of the artist pictured), continues the idea of using the National Mall as a canvas for artistic expression. Unbound by a museum’s four walls, her AR animation evokes freedom in its identity as ‘virtual.’ Yet the artist has described her intention as conveying the essence of American identity. “What I’m trying to do with this piece,” she has said, “is asking people to consider, ‘What is liberty?’”
It’s a potent question for our times. Will the pandemic affect our ideas about liberty and freedom? A recent New Yorker article by Lawrence Wright (2020 article illustration, below, left) describes how earlier pandemics—notably, the plague that ravaged Fourteenth Century Italy—pointed people to new directions that remarkably led to the Renaissance.
The social tumult caused by the Black Death helped lead to the Renaissance. Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli
Wright wonders, as we all do, if our “new normal” will lead us to reimagine the old and create something wonderful–or will the worst and most irrational ways of thinking produce cesspools of unreason? He writes, “Like wars and depressions, a pandemic offers an X-ray of society, allowing us to see all the broken places….the racial inequities, the poisonous partisanship, the governmental incompetence, the disrespect for science, the fraying of community bonds.” Wright ends on a hopeful note—“when people confront their failures, they have the opportunity to mend them.” (Lawrence Wright, “How Pandemics Wreak Havoc—And Open Minds,” THE NEW YORKER, July 20, 2020.)
The question is, will we? Are we still “one,” or
have we become intractably “many”?
By
Amy Henderson, Contributing Writer
Liberty
Bell will be accessible on all six city sites through
July 4, 2021.
When a friend raved about Google Arts & Culture, I nodded evasively. The awful truth was I only vaguely knew about this platform—I had heard of it, but had never used it. I wasn’t alone. As I began to explore, I came across a recent piece by Washington POST chief art critic Philip Kennicott where he admitted, “Before the pandemic shut down, I almost never visited the vast trove compiled by Google’s Art & Culture platform. I wrote about it when … it was announced in 2011 and then never paid it a second thought. Today, I find myself slinking back and enjoying parts of it thoroughly.” (Kennicott, WashPOST, 5/29/2020)
Columbia’s Cartagena, is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean. But climate change and rising sea levels threaten its heritage.
Urban planning is the formulating of a strategy for design and regulation of the uses of space in a city, town, or metropolitan region. The profession focuses on the physical form, economic functions, and social impacts of the urban environment, as well as on the specific location of different activities within the city space. Urban planning draws on engineering, architecture, and landscape architecture, as well as economic, social, and political concerns. Thus it is a technical profession that depends on political will and public participation — in order for it to succeed development must be regulated.More
My trip to St Petersburg, Florida, was as much a success as I could have hoped for. The show I co-curated with Amanda Cooper, Water Over The Bridge: Contemporary Seascapes, is a timely and topical exhibition. Its subject matter, which in large part includes thoughts of climate change and the rising water levels strikes a loud cord here following the wrath of the area’s fall storms. But before I get into the specifics of that exhibition and the exhibition at Leslie Curran Gallery nearby, I want to give you my thoughts on the newest exhibition at St. Pete’s MFA (Museum of Fine Art).
Above, left: Selena Roman, Untitled (Tube) (2013), Archival inkjet print, Photo: Courtesy of the artist More
The Waterfront Museum is located afloat, on the waterfront in Red Hook, NY, aboard the landmark-designated, Lehigh Valley Barge #79.
For the past twenty years the Waterfront Museum, which floats on the edge of New York Harbor about a mile south east of the Statue of Liberty, has featured numerous exhibitions that concern our waterways and coastline. The current exhibition, Derelicts: Oil Paintings by Jim St. Clair, is thanks to the film, theater and television production designer, Dean Taucher who met the museum’s president, David Sharps, and quickly organized the exhibition matching St. Clair’s gritty and highly tactile paintings with this unique and wonderful institution.More
The Arsenal Building. (Daniel Avila/NYC Parks). Located at 64th Street and Fifth Avenue in Central Park, the Arsenal is the NYC Parks headquarters, and one of two buildings within the park’s borders that predate the park itself. (image: NYC Parks)
Jennifer Lantzas is one of those very important people you never hear enough about, someone who helps to fulfill our cultural and aesthetic needs at a time when urban living can be a bit challenging and at times overwhelming. As the Deputy Director of Public Art for NYC Parks. Ms. Lantzas is responsible for managing temporary public art exhibitions in city parks throughout the five boroughs, which includes such events as artist workshops, lectures and film screenings. Parks are our most important city refuge. They bring us back to a place of calm, when we can experience a slice of nature amidst the calamity of city life. By adding art carefully and selectively in our many beautiful parks, we can achieve a further enhancement of the spirit at a time when we need it most.More
A Renzo Piano-designed steel and glass ‘lantern’ and one-story addition sit atop the original 1925 Fogg Museum. Photo: Harvard Univerity
When a visitor enters the new Harvard Art Museums, there is a feeling of great institutional arrival, a sense of an art historical place and an overall atmosphere of beauty of light and materials envelops the space.
However, with that said, the newly renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums tries to put too much great art and great educational resources into just a good, not great structure. xxxxxxMore
Swoon’s ‘tree’ reaches toward the Brooklyn Museum’s rotunda skylight in “Submerged Motherland’
Carrying around a heavy duty handle like Caledonia Dance Curry, means something remarkable is bound to happen. And with her installation, Submerged Motherlands, at the Brooklyn Museum, the street artist known by the ‘tag’ Swoon (aka, Curry) does not disappoint. For this exhibition, Swoon creates a site-specific installation in the towering rotunda gallery, transforming it into a fantastical landscape, centering on a monumental sculpted tree with a constructed environment at its base, including boats and rafts, figurative prints and drawings, and cut paper foliage. The assemblage invites the viewer to wander among the component parts, inadvertently stepping on and even being invited to enter certain features, as if to take closer measure of their apparent fragility. Assembled from found objects and discarded debris, the whole becomes larger than the sum of its parts, standing on its head the adage that ‘less is more,’ as the artist makes the more in our lives her central theme. The natural world appears under siege in this exhibition, encroached from every direction by the detritus in our lives; but careful examination of the subtext of the work reveals a hopeful message after all—and one tied to our core humanity—that nature’s cycle of life will win in the end. xxxxxxMore
Columbia’s Cartagena, is a 500-year old urban jewel in the Caribbean. But climate change and rising sea levels threaten its heritage.
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