The Clark Art Institute’s “Trembling Earth” exhibit may be the prized jewel of its current season, but exhibitions “Humane Ecology” and “Printed Renaissance” also deserve recognition for their contributions to the museum. I visited both exhibitions to explore whether they were overshadowed by “Trembling Earth” because of their content or their respective locations in the Clark’s Manton Research and Lunder Centers, which visitors could easily miss.
The subtitle of “Humane Ecology,” “Eight Positions,” references the unique conceptions of “humane ecology” by eight artists using distinct mediums. The Michael Conforti Pavilion to the right of the museum’s entrance doors displays Power to Nurture, one such “position” created by London-born Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo.
The room is filled with beautiful weavings inspired by Caycedo’s “spiritual fieldwork,” the place-based research she uses to construct portraits of people and plants. Our Culture is Based on Relationships with All Our Relatives is one such portrait, which depicts a mother and daughter harvesting blueberries on a hill. With closed eyes and a crowberry-stained smile, the giddiness in stewarding the land is bound to also induce joy from the viewer.
Caycedo’s pieces combine ideas of feminism, labor, and environmentalism. The free-standing wall outside the pavilion entitled Maternidad (Motherhood) depicts a uterus as bountiful flowers, with “In Yarrow We Trust” written on the flower in the bouquet, referencing the use of plants to terminate pregnancies in places where political institutions criminalize abortion. This mural, like the weaving, carries a phrase on the alternate side: “La maternidad será deseada o no será.” This phrase has been invoked by Latin American advocates for women’s rights. By incorporating it into her artwork, Caycedo recalls the desire for female bodily autonomy that has historically been neglected by the patriarchy. Her words and images are a powerful call to action and an impressive display of humanity in nature.
Caycedo’s portion of “Humane Ecology” stands in the center of the Clark’s main campus, but the rest of its pieces and the entirety of “Printed Renaissance” reside beyond the white marble museum. In the Manton Center is a small room that the “Printed Renaissance” exhibit calls home. Alone in the gallery, I had ample space to examine the prints and rare books. Copies of great artists’ work, from Raphael to Leonardo da Vinci, were engraved by later merchants and mass reproduced for consumers to have a print of a famous work themselves. For instance, The Battle of the Nude Men by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, depicts a gruesome conflict in which everyone has a weapon aimed at one another. Despite the copy having lost some of the original’s finer details on the muscles because of an overused copperplate that obscures the print with each use, my eyes still danced throughout the impression, and I wondered who would strike first.
All these prints and books drawn from the Clark’s collection and on loan from other institutions were exciting to thumb through. But they were merely that — something nice to look at. The exhibit attempted to establish the creation of a “canon” of artists that emerged from the Renaissance; however, I failed to see a connection between all these prints. I was left wondering whether this was just an exhibition trying to compile work by the biggest names the museum could get its hands on.
I then went outside to view the rest of “Humane Ecology.” The act of walking up the trail path to the Clark’s Lunder Center at Stone Hill was itself an exercise in “humane ecology.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that I had to walk up a built path complementary to the natural landscape to be able to see the “Humane Ecology” exhibit.
I was first greeted by an untamed garden at the top of the path, another “position” in the exhibit grown by Assistant Professor of Art Pallavi Sen and maintained by students at the College, which is abundant with vegetation from her native Bombay, India. During my time on campus this summer, it was a pleasure for me to witness how much the plants have grown throughout the duration of the exhibition. The decorative embellishments adorning Experimental Greens: Trellis Composition are barely visible, as they have been overtaken by nature. This does not, however, obscure the labor that went into the work, as the process of tending for and engaging with the garden is a continual artistic endeavor.
Inside, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio’s Pulmón #2 has also changed as time has passed. Powered by a rubber bladder, the sculpture deflates over the course of the exhibition, “evoking the respiration of the trees, the breath of migrant workers, and those inhaling the smoggy air of the artist’s native Los Angeles,” according to the accompanying plaque. As the natural environment deteriorates, so too do the literal lungs in our bodies.
The other five “positions” of “Humane Ecology” by Korakrit Arunanondchai, Allison Janae Hamilton, Juan Antonio Olivares, Christine Howard Sandoval, and Kandis Williams use sculpture, video, and sound installations to communicate their interpretations of humanity and nature to the viewer. From having to navigate a sea of hanging shells which relay existential musings to encountering sculptures of alligators eating themselves, which conjure up legends of African American infanticide, the Lunder Center houses an impressive array of works that “illuminate patterns of cultivation and care, migration and adaptation, extraction and exploitation that span geographical, historical, and species lines,” according to the exhibition brief.
“Humane Ecology” and “Printed Renaissance” are both ambitious in their pursuits, but they are not equally” effective. “Printed Renaissance comes off as a survey of works on paper from the Renaissance instead of an account of the genealogy of the prominence of Renaissance culture in the development of the discipline of art history.
In contrast, “Humane Ecology,” although broad in meaning and medium, effectively demonstrates the distinct relationships that individuals have with land. Even when discussing something as abstract as humanity and the environment at large, there is no correct sense of a “humane ecology.”
I urge students at the College to explore art that is available outside the Clark’s main building. The thoughtful process behind curating these exhibitions in conversation with the permanent collection should be recognized on their own merit. If you find yourself at the Clark looking for Munch, don’t forget to stop by the museum’s other exhibits.
