Material Resources: Intersections of Art and the Environment

Museum of Art Museum of Art

Exhibition: Material Resources: Intersections of Art and the Environment

Dates:

Location:

Focus Gallery, Halford Gallery, Media Gallery, Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery, Center Gallery
This exhibition explores the intersections of art and the environment with works drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection. Featuring objects from antiquity to today, "Material Resources: Intersections of Art and the Environment" examines artists’ dependence on Earth’s material resources, while presenting art as an integral “material” resource in the study of the environment.

Selected Works

Turkish, "Discorides Materia Medica," 1200, ink and gouache. Bowdoin College Mueum of Art. 1962.29.
"Untitled (Plan for a Model City)," 1935, detail, chalk by Le Corbusier, French, 1887–1965. Gift of Mrs. Edith L. K. Sills, Honorary Degree, 1952
"Devil's Slide Utah, U.P.R.R.," 1873–1874, albumen print by Carleton Emmons Watkins. Gift of Isaac Lagnado, Class of 1971, in honor of Professor William D. and Alison Shipman, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, 1991.111.
"Fayum Mummy Portrait of a Young Man," wood (limewood, tilia), wax-based paint (encaustic), gold leaf , Roman Egypt (Fayum?), ca. second century CE . Museum Purchase, Adela Wood Smith Trust. 2015.38
"Mr. and Mrs. George Rink, Zion National Park, Utah, September 16th, 1945," gelatin silver print, by an unidentified artist. Gift of Isaac Lagnado, Class of 1971, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. 2011.68.31.

About

This exhibition explores the complex intersections of art and the environment in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art permanent collections. Showcasing objects from antiquity to today, Material Resources: Intersections of Art and the Environment examines artists’ dependence on Earth’s material resources over millennia, and questions how the production of art objects impacts interconnected environmental, political, and social ecologies. Investigating the related histories of living organisms, the environment, and art objects, Material Resources presents art as an integral “material” resource in the study of the environment.

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