The topics explored in this exhibition examine human interventions—physical, infrastructural, and representational—on forests, deserts, and bodies of water in the United States. The exhibition features photography, lithography, and ceramics from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each of these artistic interventions present the elements of fire and water as evocative subjects in diverse landscapes or as matter integral to the processes of making and creating. As relationships between humans and the environment fluctuated over time and across the United States, fire and water emerge from the Museums collection as potent agents within these interactions and as rich subjects for ecocritical exploration.
While several of the artists are unknown, this exhibition includes the work of Adrian D. Clem (1906-1977), William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952), and Maria Montoya Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1887-1980).
Museums Collections Focus
The Museums Collections encompass a wide variety of objects acquired by the University of Delaware from 1917 to the present day. Museums Collections Focus is a series of online exhibitions that provides a bite-sized introduction to the diversity of these holdings, from Renaissance prints and ceramics by Indigenous makers to mineral specimens and contemporary photography. Organized by theme or medium, these focused exhibitions offer new ways to engage with objects in the collections.
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Credit
Online exhibition curated by Carolyn Hauk, a Ph.D. student in Art History and the 2023-2024 Graduate Research Assistant for Museums.
Thumbnail-sized images of copyrighted works are displayed under fair use. As a service to the public and the scholarly community, the Museums may make larger images of copyrighted works available in the online collection catalog. If you wish to use such images for commercial purposes you must seek permission from the copyright holder.
