Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry and Ecology along the Hudson River Gallery Talk

“Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology” reveals how human and industrial intrusion has changed the ecology of the Hudson and its surroundings, and examines how contemporary artists are bringing new environmental perspectives and responses to the deterioration and reclamation of the shoreline. The exhibition challenges the “scenic Hudson” mythologies promoted in the 19th century, and considers contrasting views of how the Hudson River has been portrayed by a broad range of creators over the centuries.

Gallery Talk, January 11, 1pm: Jean-Marc Superville Sovak is a multidisciplinary artist and teaching professional whose work is deeply rooted in the community around him. His public works include organizing and officiating a “Burial for White Supremacy” (Unison Arts Center, New Paltz, NY), retracing speculative steps on the Underground Railroad across historic sites in the Hudson Valley (Wilderstein Historic Site, Rhinebeck, NY), designing memorials to Afro-Dutch pioneers in colonial New Netherlands (Rockland County Art in Public Places), and “I Draw & You Talk”, a storefront portrait-drawing studio doubling as an oral history project (Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY.) His current practice, “a-Historical Landscapes,” involves altering 19th-century landscape engravings to include images borrowed from contemporaneous Anti-Slavery publications. A selection of works from this series is included in the Shifting Shorelines exhibition.

Wallach Art Gallery
Lenfest Center for the Arts
615 West 129th Street | 6th Floor
New York, NY 10027

For more info: wallach.columbia.edu