Peabody-Essex Museum with Oliver, Jackson's artwork

The PEM continues to produce exhibitions which are the rival of any of the largest museums, especially in their ability to illustrate, educate, and disturb.  This is an exhibit not to be missed.  It gathers some of the greatest artists and their work in landscape, and brings it into our present state of the destruction of our environment.  It is a  profoundly scary story, and Oliver and I came away with both elated and somber emotions.
The art should be seen in the environment of the museum, and the spectacular way in which the PEM has organized the art.  It is a masterpiece of curating.

Pacific Northwest Coast, probably Haida

Rattle, 19th. century

PEM

Carl von Linne (Carolus Linnaeus) 1707-1778

Systema naturae (A General System of Nature,

through the Three Grand Kingdoms of Animals,

Vegetables, and Minerals, 1735

Missouri Botanical Garden Library

How incredible to see an authentic Linnaeus, one of the greatest of scientests,

and the founder of our modern classification system!

Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859

Geography of Equatorial Plants, Physical Tableau of the Andes

and Neighboring Countries  1807

Missouri Botanical Garden Library

And in the same exhibit (!) von Humboldt, the founder of Biogeography, or

the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in space and time.

If I remember correctly, Aubrey and Maturin, in the great, great series of novels about 

the British navy by Patrick O'Brien, were always doing research on their voyages for Humboldt.

Diego de Vlaldes (Didacus Valades)  1533-1582

Illustration of the Great Chain of Being, in "Rhetorica Christiana"  1579

I will have to do some research on this.

John James Audubon  1785-1851

Carolina Parrot

from "The Birds of America"

PEM

This species is extinct. 

Pemonscot artist

Powder horn, before 1815

PEM

Oliver admiring:

Charles Willson Peale  1741-1827

George Washington at the Battle of Princeton

Thomas Cole   1801-1848

A View of the Mountain Pass Called

the Notch of the White Mountains

(Crawford Notch)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

detail of above

Thomas Moran  1857-1925

Lower Falls, Yellowstone Park
Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Frederic Edwin Church   1826-1900

Cayambe

New York Historical Society

detail of above

detail of above

Martin Johnson Heade  1819-1904

Gremlin in the Studio II

Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn. 

What an unusual surprise from  Heade!  The great painter of detailed hummingbirds 

and flowers from S. America, and now, this!

detail of above

Martin Johnson Heade

Newburyport Marshes, Approaching Storm

Albert Bierstadt  1830-1902

Mount Adams, Washington

Princeton University Art Museum

Of course, you would hope to see, in an exhibition of this nature (pun), a good 

representation of Bierstadt, who, when I was younger, was the painter I most admired above all others. 

Albert Bierstadt

Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Valerie Hegarty   Born 1967

Fallen Bierstadt

Brooklyn Museum

When you first see this, you are so startled!  And then you realize it is intentional, and is 

a  pointed rebuke of Bierstadt, whose paintings (at least from the viewpoint of the curaters) invited the

surge Westward, despoiling of landscape, and destruction of the indigenous people.

Frederick Law Olmsted  1822-1903

Calvert Vaux   1824-1895

Greensward Plan for Central Park

New York City Municipal Archives

Like the Linnaeus,  how very cool to see an Olmsted original

David Gilmour Blythe   1815-1865

Prospecting

Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

James Hamilton  1819-1878

Burning Oil Well at Night, near

Rouseville, Pennsylvania

Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Thomas Moran  1838-1926

Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia

Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa

What a stunning, and surprising piece of art by Moran, most famous for his landscapes.

detail of above

George Bellows  1882-1925

Cliff Dwellers

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Bellows' gritty art is so powerful and riveting.

David Bradley   born 1954  Ojibwe

American Dream II

PEM

Artist in Michigan

Men Standing with  Pile of Buffalo Skulls,

Michigan Carbon Works  1892

Detroit Public Library

Lakota artist

Buffalo robe, 1882

Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

Georgia O'Keefe  1887-1986

The Lawrence Tree

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford

A:shewi (Zuni Pueblo) artist

Jar, before 1900

PEM

Morris Louis

Intrigue

Princeton Univ. Art Museum

Alexander Hogue  1898-1994

Crucified Land

Thomas Gilcrease Foundation

Dorothea Lange  1895-1965

Ex-Tenant Farmer on Relief Grant

in the Imperial Valley, California

Princeton Univ. Art Museum

Three generations of Wyeths, exhibited side by side

N.C. Wyeth  1882-1945

Roping Horses in the Corral

Private Collection

Andrew Wyeth  1917-2009

My Hound

Private Collection

Jamie Wyeth  born 1946

Portrait of Lady, Study #1

Private collection

Alexis Rockman  born 1962

Aviary

Private collection

Of all the "disturbing" art of the exhibit, this one affected me the most. 

The grim landscape, the mutated creatures, all had to have been 

influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, both in subject matter, and in the colors used.

I've learned that Rockman worked with Ang Lee to develop art work for

the movie "Life of Pi"

detail of above

detail of above

detail of above

Somehow, this creature was the most painful to look at. 

The next four photos are from Newburyport, where Jackson had an overnight at 

the Unitarian church.  The overnighters spent a lot of time doing art.  

Some examples to follow, including Jankson's.