Reading American Landscapes: Environmental Allusions with Naomi Slipp - New Bedford Whaling Museum

Reading American Landscapes: Environmental allusions with naomi slipp

A painting of wide open marsh during a sunset.
Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819-1904), Newburyport Marshes — Cattle in the Marsh, Near a Fence, c. 1866–1876. Oil on canvas, 13 x 26 in. (33 x 66 cm). Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Collection.

Thursday, October 27

5:30 - 6:30 PM Reception
6:30 - 7:30 PM Lecture

Tickets

$10 Members
$15 Non-Members
(Sign-in is required to purchase a Member ticket)

Join the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Chief Curator Naomi Slipp, as she discusses the museum’s recent exhibition, Re/Framing the View: Nineteenth-Century American Landscapes. Naomi will discuss how American landscapes are more than what we see at surface-level, how they render the landscape, and what is hidden behind them in meaningful ways. Nineteenth-century American paintings that depict intertidal zones and coastal spaces, where land meets the sea, can illuminate the historical management of coastal erosion, the shoreline economies of the working classes, the impacts of climate change and rising sea levels on Earth, and the industrialization of the waterfront. Take in views of the exhibition and join the lecture to learn how paintings of water can illuminate historical thinking around the environment and foreshadow current ecological crises, and leave hopefully wondering how we can rethink our future by looking to the landscapes of the past.

About the Exhibition
Re/Framing the View: Nineteenth-Century American Landscapes is an exciting and timely invitation to view paintings held in private hands and usually hung behind closed doors – allowing exploration of the many meanings of the American landscape, both historically to nineteenth-century viewers and today for twenty-first century audiences. The exhibition offers a layered interpretation of the cultural and historical meaning of such paintings. Themes explored include the environmental and cultural violence underlying nineteenth-century American landscape painting, including manifest destiny, settler colonialism, and Native removal; material extraction and industrial expansion; agricultural development and fisheries; and global exploration and imperialist projects. By interrogating the place of gender, race and ethnicity, as well as environment and ecology, we re/frame the view and stage meaningful conversations about historical and contemporary issues and events. To learn more about or visit the exhibition, visit Reframing the View Exhibition page.

This major publication and landmark exhibition have been made possible by funding from:

The William M. Wood Foundation, Cynthia and Douglas Crocker, Victoria and David Croll, KAM Appliances, Louis M. Ricciardi & Elizabeth M. Soares, Mary Jean and William Blasdale, an anonymous donor, and other individual sponsors.