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For the last several decades, Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has been collaborating with artists to imagine and render specific animals, plants, and places as they would have appeared millions of years ago. Through the lens of time, any place has been many places. The human eye is tuned to see animals as individuals and plants as background and the result is that many expressions of paleoart are biased toward the animals and not the places. This creates a false sense that we understand past landscapes.
This lecture was presented in conjunction with "Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands," on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from December 12, 2024 through June 1, 2025.
Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in collaboration with the Monhegan Museum of Art & History. Recorded January 23, 2025 at Bowdoin College.
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