Denver Art Museum | January 5, 2022 | Denver, CO

Earthworks

The 16th annual Petrite Institute of Western American Art Symposium spotlights ancient and contemporary land art.

In August 1972 artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s monumental environmental artwork Valley Curtain was installed in Rifle, Colorado. After taking 28 months to complete, the orange fabric rose between two mountain slopes of Colorado State Highway 325. It remained for only 28 hours before strong winds made it necessary to start the removal. Marking the 50th anniversary of the dramatic installation, the Petrite Institute of Western American Art’s 16th annual symposium, Earthworks: Land Art in the West, will explore this dynamic piece and others created in the past and present.

Don Stinson, High Beams and Starlight: Beyond Absence–Double Negative, July 2003 PM, 2004, oil on linen, 81 x 89”. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Laure and Matt McConnell, Noel and Tom Congdon, Jennifer Doran, and Jim Robischon, 2006.5

The daylong event, which returns to the museum after an online-only version in 2021, will center on historic contexts of earthworks and the individual artists who have contributed to this compelling art form. There will be spotlights on both ancient and contemporary realms, showing how the earth has moved artists and how it has shaped aspects of the Western art genre.

JR Henneman, Associate Curator of Western American Art for the Petrie Institute, says, “After the symposium every year, around February or March, we take the time to debrief, decompress and go back to the drawing board and brainstorm ideas. This year the idea of land art came from Valerie Hellstein [who worked for the Petrite Institute and is now an editor in the museum’s publications department].” The theme of land art is a first for the now 16-year-old symposium, offering a fresh and completely unique idea for dialogue within the Western context.

Newark Landwork land survey map. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection, AL07257.

Building on the 50th anniversary of the Valley Curtain project, the museum wanted to “embrace and reflect on the artists and the work they did in the 1970s. They were inspired by the land and the earth of the West,” says Henneman. The day will be led by moderator Patricia Limerick, faculty director and chair of the board of the Center of the American West at University of Colorado, Boulder, while four speakers will lecture on important topics related to Earthworks.

The day begins with John N. Low, an enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and an associate professor at Ohio State University, presenting a talk on the Hopewell Era Peoples of Native North America. Low, who is also director of the University’s Newark Earthworks Center, will share how the earth was used 2,000 years ago by Indigenous people of Ohio.

James Nisbet, chair of art history and associate professor at University of California, Irvine, is a specialist in land art and will discuss why the West became a location for land art in the 20th century and ecological issues that affect these works. As Henneman explains, he’ll share “how these artworks lived into the present and how they continue to engage with their landscapes.”

Michelle Stuart, Stone Alignments/Solstice Cairns, 1979, permanent land work, 3200 boulders, varying sizes from Hood River starting at the foot of Mt. Hood, overall 1000 x 800’ approx... circle 100’, four cairns 5’ high. Rowena Plateau, Commissioned by Portland Center or the Visual Arts © Michelle Stuart.

A conversation on women in the land art movement, presented by Leigh A. Arnold, associate curator of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Colorado, will happen after the lunch break. It will be a must-listen, as it reveals the women who were significant in the understanding of earthworks but overshadowed by their counterparts. “For the first time, we reveal the female voices who are largely missing from the land art gamut,” adds Henneman.

The final lecture of the day will be on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Valley Curtain from James Baker, who knew the artists and will share a more personal perspective.

Attendees are invited to submit questions during the event, and following all four lectures will be the concluding panel discussion and Q-and-A.

Earthworks: Land Art in the West
January 5, 2022
10 a.m.-5 p.m., live and virtual components

Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO 80204
(720) 865-5000, www.denverartmuseum.org