Program Calendar

This talk will discuss the work of artists addressing histories of land use and ecology in eastern Massachusetts. Starting with Nancy Holt’s Wild Spot (1980) on the Wellesley College campus and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Turnaround/Surround (1990-2004), a “public earthwork” on a Cambridge landfill, this talk will extend to the contemporary moment and the exhibition Local Ecologies that spanned the three eastern UMass campuses in 2019-2020 (Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell). How have artists responded to the region’s indigenous and colonial histories, histories of industry and transcendentalism, biological systems and geological sites, and currents of global and local exchange?

Presented by Kirsten Swenson, Associate Professor of Art History, UMass Lowell; Local Ecologies, co-author

Photo courtesy of Kirsten Swenson