On Earth: A Fragile Existence highlights works from the JSMA’s permanent collection that reflect a multi-layered understanding of humanity's role in our shared ecology with the non-human, or more-than-human, world. The Anthropocene, our current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on the natural world, is a time of both staggering environmental change and incredible innovation and discovery. As witnesses and participants in this era, artists observe, record, interpret, advocate, and imagine. The works on view are presented as guideposts in considering these complex and urgent issues and encourage reflection on one’s own place within our shared global ecology.

• What is the current state of the natural world, and what is humanity’s responsibility to our environment?
• How do human and animal interactions shape the ecology we share?
• What is the relationship between ecological shifts and human rights issues, including food justice, spatial justice, access to clean water, and environmental racism?
• How does art record the impact of human activity, including industrialization and extraction practices, global trade, and migration, on our climate and environment?
• Where do art and science intersect, and what can be learned from art that documents or responds to our most pressing environmental issues?
• What can humans do to change course?

On Earth: A Fragile Existence is organized by Danielle Knapp (McCosh Curator), and Thom Sempere (Associate Curator of Photography), with contributions from JSMA Executive Director, John Weber, and Anne Rose Kitagawa, Chief Curator of Collections & Asian Art and Director of Academic Programs, and the assistance of Morning Glory Ritchie (Mildred Bryant Brooks Student Intern in American Works on Paper). This exhibition supports the goals of the JSMA’s Faculty Engagement Working Group and the University of Oregon’s Environment Initiative, a campus-wide coordinated effort to create an intellectual and active hub focused on higher education’s role and contribution to a just and livable future. On Earth: A Fragile Existence invites further conversation around the university’s 2021-22 “Common Reading” selection, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation). For more information, visit https://environment.uoregon.edu/about-us and https://fyp.uoregon.edu/common-reading-2021-2022-braiding-sweetgrass.

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos)'s Artist Project Space exhibition pearly gates includes painting installation, video, and woven baskets, and thematically considers access in terms of land, ancestry, resources, and human relationships. The artist makes visible the complex systems of engagement between ancestral objects and contemporary institutional practices. Siestreem’s work bridges education and institutional reform, and this project specifically focuses on the care for Indigenous works in museum collections as well as the structural systems that provide or omit access and appropriate context to the presentations of Indigenous fine art.

This exhibition is made possible by the University of Oregon, Center for Art Research (CFAR) and Curators-in-Residence, Tiffany Harker and Iris Williamson. Their 2021-22 program, titled HABITS OF DENIAL, features research, exhibitions, and public programs around the theme of “access.” Collaborating artists investigate specific issues within larger systems of power and their embedded exclusionary impacts. Four anchoring programs will examine access through lenses of language and communication, technology and economies, communities and archives, and Indigeneity and institutions. Residency and related programming are made possible by The Ford Family Foundation. 

Special thanks to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University for their kind support of pearly gates.

A saint is a being worthy of worship and set apart from the world around them due to their unique relationship with the gods. During their mortal life, Christian saints had a special relationship with God, the ability to perform miracles, a willingness to suffer torture and death for their beliefs, and followed the pious behavior set by Christ. One or more of these qualities guaranteed them a privileged place in heaven and are therefore intercessors between humanity and the all mighty post-mortem. After their death or martyrdom, the body, associated objects, religious buildings in their name, and images of the saints were used as tools to directly communicate with God through the saint. The stories of their lives, called hagiography, provided a semiotic language for art and clear moralistic sermons to preach. Saints can be as renowned as St. John, one of the twelve apostles, or culturally specific, such as the Russian saint Sergius of Radonezh. This exhibition explores the lives of saints, the practice of saint veneration, and the tools of intercession through icons, manuscripts, and other religious objects from Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. Zoey Kambour, 2021-22 post-graduate fellow in European & American art, curated this selection of works from the JSMA’s icon collection, courtesy of A. Dean and Lucille I. McKenzie, the Knight Library’s Special Collections, and loaned objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gallery Guide - English