Northshore Magazine

Northshore April 2019

Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.

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NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 46 APRIL 2019 CONTACT pem.org natural resources, as if no one lived there before the concept of Manifest Destiny underwrote the taking of the Western wilderness. But before succumbing to the romanticism of these images, we are pulled up short by two paintings side by side: Albert Bierstadt's Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite (1871- 73), designed to encourage excitement about westward expansion in the late 1800s, next to Valerie Hegarty's Fallen Bierstadt (2007), a deliberately damaged reproduction of the original that conveys the fragility of nature. "There is an interconnectedness to every- thing," says PEM's Kramer. "To view wilder- ness as this separate entity is a farce and creates major disconnects, which can lead to human environmental catastrophes." Similarly, one's appreciation of an elegant neoclassical silver hollowware sugar urn on display is challenged by a placard stating that mining and refining silver ore created working conditions that resulted in the poisoning, maiming, and death of millions. This dialogue of historic masterworks with contemporary topics engages you through- out the exhibition. Like deforestation and workplace hazards, there are a variety of other emotional "entry points" to Nature's Nation. If the sinuous dance movements and methodic drum beats in a video juxtaposition of an indigenous Pacific Northwest tribe with electronic dance music don't cause you to reconsider your perspective, photojournalist Dorothea Lange's haunting black-and-white portrait of an extenant farmer in Depression-era California. Civil War photographer Matthew Brady's Wounded Trees at Gettysburg, showing a man lying on the ground surrounded by trees battered by bullets and shells, is a small 4- by 7-inch stereograph dramatically mounted all by itself on an entire wall. Toward the end of the exhibition, in a section titled "Documentation and Activism," there is a poster designed by Robert Rauschenberg for the first Earth Day on view, along with Edward Burtynsky's large-format photograph depicting the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding, and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways," Burtynsky writes in his artist's statement about his series of oil spill photographs. "My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted—until it's gone." Those closest to the mounting of this exhibition emphasize its goal to broaden our perspectives and attitudes of the wider world. "It is not all doom and gloom," says PEM's Bailly. "We want to follow the lead of the extraordinary artists included in this exhibition, who have used their vision and their talents to inspire us to imagine new ways forward." Clockwise from top left, William Bradford, Among the Ice Floes, 1878. Oil on canvas. Collection of Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch. Photography by Bob Packert; John Singer Sargent, Olive Trees, Corfu, 1909. Oil on canvas. Collection of Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch. Photography by Bob Packert/Peabody Essex Museum; Dale Chihuly, Aphrodite Blue Persian Set with Carnelian Lip Wraps, 2002. Molded and blown glass. Collection of Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch. © Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Stephen Petegorsky. L I V E + P L AY

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