Dates:
Location:
Becker GallerySelected Works
Diving Board (Salton Sea), 1983, ektacolor print by Richard Misrach, American, born 1949. Museum Purchase. 1985.26
Cemetario, Juchitan, Oaxaca, 1988, gelatin silver print by Graciela Iturbide, Mexican, born 1942. Archival Collection of Marion Boulton Stroud and Acadia Summer Arts Program, Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Gift from the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Foundation. 2018.10.166
Angel, 2007, c-print on mounted on Plexiglas, by Alfredo Jaar, Chilean, born 1956. Archival Collection of Marion Boulton Stroud and Acadia Summer Arts Program, Mt. Desert Island, Maine. Gift from the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Foundation. 2018.10.178
The Three Gorges Dam Migration, 2009, watercolor and ink on mulberry paper and silk by Yun-Fei Ji, Chinese, born 1963. Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund. 2021.16
About
In 1972, a group of Bowdoin faculty and staff founded the Environmental Studies Program, one of the first in the nation. Human Nature: Environmental Studies at 50, organized by five Environmental Studies coordinate majors, celebrates this important anniversary by exploring how twentieth-century artists have reinforced or challenged ideas about nature and human beings’ relationship to it. Featuring works by a diverse range of artists held in the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at the Bowdoin College Library, and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Human Nature investigates such themes as race, labor, gender, consumption, technology, Indigeneity, and migration. In so doing, it illuminates the contradictions and complexities of the Anthropocene: the current geological age when human activity has been the primary influence on the planet’s climate and environment.
OrganizersJohn Auer ’23
Tess Davis ’24
Sophia Hirst ’24
Hayden Keene ’23
Brandon Lozano ’24
Under the direction of Matthew Klingle, Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies