Thursday, November 2 | Doors at 6pm, Program at 6:30pm
Free with admission | Registration Required
Join Chief Curator of Re/Framing The View, Naomi Slipp, and National Endowment For The Arts Heritage award recipient, Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah- Wampanoag), together on stage for a thought-provoking, heart-felt conversation about the many meanings of the American landscape, both historically to nineteenth-century viewers and today for twenty-first century audiences. Moderated by MMAM's executive Director Scott Pollock. Discussion followed by a coffee and dessert reception at 7pm.
Register for the Reception & Conversation
*Please submit one registration per attendee.
About the exhibition
Drawn from six private collections, the New Bedford Whaling Museum collection, and six strategic institutional loans, Re/Framing the View: Nineteenth-century American Landscapes includes works by William Bradford, John F. Kensett, Martin Johnson Heade, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, George Inness, Francis A. Silva, and Sanford Robinson Gifford, among many others.
As this list suggests, the majority of US based nineteenth-century American landscape painters were men, and heading out into the wilderness to capture the scene was viewed as a masculine pursuit. A selection of objects – including china, nature studies in watercolor, and decorative arts – underscore the gendered aspects of American landscape painting by demonstrating where and how women participated in capturing American flora and fauna.
The realities of women’s opportunities in the arts are elaborated upon through paintings and prints by Fitz Henry Lane and Mary Mellen; Asher B. Durand and Lucy Maria Durand Woodman; Evelina Mount, Adelheid Dietrich, and Claude Raguet Hirst; and Mary Nimmo Moran and Ellen Day Hale.
While the exhibition celebrates the work of these artists, it also offers a layered interpretation of the cultural and historical meaning of such paintings. What such artists often failed to capture are the environmental conditions and social concerns that may underlie picturesque imagery.
“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. ”
Naomi Slipp
Naomi Slipp is the Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator and Director of Museum Learning at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her research explores the intersections between art and science in the nineteenth century, and she has published essays in Panorama, Sculpture Journal, British Art Studies, and the collections Victorian Science and Imagery (2021), Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth Century Art and Visual Culture (2019), and Bodies beyond Borders (2017), among other venues. She holds a PhD from Boston University and MA from University of Chicago, and was previously a tenured Associate Professor of Art History at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama.
Elizabeth James-Perry
2023 NEA Heritage Fellowship recipient Elizabeth James-Perry is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer and artist who sculpts rich purple and white wampum jewelry and woven wampum from the quahog shell, and makes naturally-dyed northeastern hand weavings of Indian hemp, milkweed and wool. In cultivating many of the plants used in natural dyes at her home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, her gardens serve to re-seed the suburbs with environmentally valuable Indigenous species. A 38 th Voyager aboard the historic Charles W. Morgan whaling vessel, she is a descendant of Gay Head whalemen. The artist holds a degree in Marine Science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and a certificate for Digital Tribal Stewardship from Washington State University. Employed for over a decade with the Aquinnah Tribal Historic Preservation Office, she served as Federal Tribal Co-Lead of the Northeast Ocean Planning Body and consults on matters involving tribal marine resources, Wampanoag life and whaling history. As a member of a Nation that has long harvested the sea, James-Perry’s perspective that combines Algonquian Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Native genealogy, art and science in her ways of relating to life on the North Atlantic. Museums commissions include the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Volkenkunde, and Allard Pierson. She co-produced a short film with designer Christien Meinderstma that focuses on wampum beads and red glass trade beads, and her wampum appeared in the theatrical productions of Manahatta, the A.R.T. Harvard production of Moby Dick, Rutherford Falls, Desperate Crossing, and the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Program film As Nutayunean; she researched 19 th century Wampanoag abolitionists for her essay in Dawnland Voices Vol 2.0 and rare eastern textiles for an article about King Philips Sash in the collection of Peabody Harvard Museum. She has installed creative Native plant gardens around Massachusetts as a way to highlight Native continuance.
Elizabethjamesperry.com
Acknowledgements
The Minnesota Marine Art Museum is proud to partner with the New Bedford Whaling Museum to present Re/Framing the View: Nineteenth-century American Landscapes. This landmark exhibition and major publication 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, Roger Servison, Mary Jean and William Blasdale, an anonymous donor, and other individual supporters.
We are grateful to private lenders and museum staff at partner institutions who supported loans, including Cynthia and Douglas Crocker; Tina and Paul Schmid; Frances Levin; Roger Servison; Victoria and David Croll; Carol Taylor and John Deknatel; Erica Hirshler and Ann Walt Tagliamonte at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Maureen O’Brien and Tara Emsley at the RISD Museum; Carol Soltis, Kathleen Foster, Sophia Meyers, Hyunsoo Woo, Hannah Kauffman, Eileen Owens, and Teresa Lignelli at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Jonathan Olly and Andrea Squeri at the Long Island Museum of American Art; Margi Hofer and Mark Schlemmer at the New York Historical Society; Christina Michelon and Lily Sterling at the Boston Athenaeum; and Michael and Stephan Winokur. We are especially thankful for the participation of Cynthia and Douglas Crocker, whose incredible collection of nineteenth-century American landscape paintings inspired the project and form the core of its display.
Special thanks to both our Museums’ Board of Trustees, members, volunteers and staff. Especially grateful to the incredibly dedicated and talented staff who contributed directly to the project: Naomi Slipp, the Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator; Emma Rocha, Curatorial Assistant; Melanie Correia, Exhibitions Manager; Emily Mead, Director of Philanthropy; Jennifer Smith, Manager of Institutional Relations; Jordan Berson, Director of Collections; Michael Lapides, Director of Digital Engagement; catalog contributors Darienne Turner, Elizabeth James-Perry, Astrid Tvetenstrand, and Jennifer Stettler Parsons; and Brian Bierig, Jacek Gancarz, John Morris, and Scott Benson, who assisted with design, object photography, copyediting of the exhibition catalog. And special thanks to Dr. Janelle Cooper and Dr. Kathleen Hanson for keeping the connections between the Upper Mississippi river and the East Coast alive and thriving.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.