Situated at the geographic nexus of awe-inspiring scenery and rapidly-changing surroundings, the Nevada Museum of Art is an ideal place for conversations about the ways that humans creatively interact with natural, built, and virtual environments. Showcasing photographs that examine human interaction and intervention with environments The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment is the Museum’s signature photography collection premiering September 24, 2011 through January 8, 2012. A significant exhibition with an accompanying publication, The Altered Landscape represents a milestone for the Museum on the occasion of its 80th Anniversary in 2011.
“The revisionist portion of this collection,” according to cultural critic Dave Hickey, “is informed by the suspicion that the way we represent the landscape is somehow complicit in our exploitation of it. So these photographers aspire to portray nature differently and, in doing so, portray another nature altogether—a “one way” nature that is as chaotic, dynamic, and historical as culture itself.”
The Altered Landscape Photography Collection was founded in the early 1990s. Thanks to a generous endowment, and the continuing support of Carol Franc Buck and the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, the Museum has built an impressive collection of photographs worthy of international attention. Some of the leading photographers in this collection include Bernd and Hilla Becher, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Edward Burtynsky, Amy Stein, Terry Evans, David Maisel, Olivo Barbieri and Fandra Chang. The momentum of the Collection’s growth and depth became the scholarly groundwork for the 2009 launch of the Museum’s Center for Art + Environment (CA+E), an internationally-recognized research center that supports the practice, study and awareness of creative interactions between people and their natural, built and virtual environments.
“These photographers reveal the ways that individuals and industries have marked, mined, toured, tested, developed, occupied, and exploited landscapes over the last fifty years,” commented Ann M. Wolfe, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Nevada Museum of Art. “Viewing these photographs as a collection reveals that much of today’s human activity involves the physical alteration of land and the making of marks on the Earth and that the Earth’s surface offers an irrefutable record of human civilization’s impressive endeavors—as well its worst failures.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive, 288-page deluxe publication published by Skira Rizzoli that examines the collection’s roots in the 1970s New Topographics movement and highlights recent photographic acquisitions in this rapidly changing field. The book features essays by Ann M. Wolfe; Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDBLOG and Contributing Editor of Wired UK, also an advisor for the Center for Art + Environment (CA+E) and featured presenter at 2011 Art + Environment Conference; Lucy Lippard, cultural critic and an advisor for the CA+E; WJT Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago, also an editor, a scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature.
The Altered Landscape is the featured exhibition in the 2011 Art + Environment Season – the backdrop of the 2011 Art + Environment Conference taking place at the Museum September 29 through October 1, 2011. During the A+E Season, the Museum’s galleries will be programmed with exhibitions related to natural, built, and virtual environments—serving as a springboard for Conference sessions and keynote presentations. Among the exhibitions on view will be: The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment; Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison: Sierra Nevada|An Adaptation; Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions; Photographs by Jean-Luc Mylayne: The Heavens are Blue; Fog Garden: The Architecture of Water; This is Not a Trojan Horse: A Project by Amy Franceschini and Mike Taussig; Water Thief: Diana Al-Hadid; Shirin Neshat: Passage; The Unworthiness of Our Response: Photographs by Robert Adams; Richard Black: Australia’s Murray River; Tim Hawkinson: Totem; Linda Fleming: Modeling the Universe; Jacob Hashimoto: Here in Sleep, a World, Muted to a Whisper; and Art, Science, and the Arc of Inquiry: The Evolution of the Nevada Museum of Art.
SPONSORSHIP:
The Nevada Museum of Art gratefully acknowledges the following supporters for their enthusiastic support of The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Landscape. Major Sponsor: Carol Franc Buck Foundation; Sponsors: National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Generous Supporters: Wilhelm and Elke Hoppe Living Trust; The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Atlantis Casino Resort and Spa, Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, Stremmel Gallery, Maureen Mullarkey, Kathie Bartlett; Additional Support: Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York. Grants for equipment and technology from the following organizations also made this project possible: The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) with the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment will be exhibited September 24, 2011 through January 8, 2012 at the Nevada Museum of Art, Donald W. Reynolds Center for the Visual Arts, E. L. Wiegand Gallery located at 160 West Liberty Street in downtown Reno. The Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday. Cost: Museum members free; $10 adults; $8 students/seniors; $1 children 6 – 12; free for children five and under.
Image: The Altered Landscape Nevada Museum of Art
For more information, please call 775.329.3333 or visit www.nevadaart.org