The great white north

by Michael J. DeCicco

The geographic and thematic scope of the latest art exhibits starting this fall at the Whaling Museum stretches from America to the Arctic.

"Re/Framing the View: Nineteenthcentury American Landscapes" will open at the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Wattles Gallery from October 28 to May 14, and "Polar Bears (Ursus Maritimus) and the Arctic Imaginary" will be featured at the museum's Center Street Gallery from December 12 to May 7.

Naomi Slipp, the museum's Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator, explained these will be the two latest of the eight rotating exhibits that the museum presents each year. "Re/Framing the View" will display 125 pieces from a variety of locally and nationally celebrated American landscape painters and other artists. “A diverse array of artists," Slipp explained, "displaying a lot of different kinds of art to show the different ways people saw the American landscape."

It'll not just be paintings, but also glass art, engravings, photos, ceramics, scrimshaw, prints, books, and even hat boxes. And not just as-far-as-the-horizon landscapes, but still-life paintings and botanical representations. "An expansion beyond traditional landscapes," she said. "An historic view of our landscape but also a link to today."

Slipp said she wants the historical landscapes to make people think about the environment, how environmentally the landscape being presented has changed. "Scenes from the 19th century that make people think about our current environmental concerns," she explained. "Scenic coastal and maritime views that will help people reflect on our part of the world then and now."

Slipp even wants the viewer to think how the Native Americans who are in (and not in) some of these paintings were portrayed back then, as ethnic stereotypes or historically inaccurate fantasies. "I encourage people to think about it all," she said.

One third of the show will be from the museum's own collection, another third on loan from private collections, and a further third from other museums, specifically the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Long Island Museum, the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, the Boston Athenaeum, and the New York Historical Society.

One third of the show will be from the museum's own collection, another third on loan from private collections, and a further third from other museums

Artists in this exhibition will include William Bradford, John F. Kensett, Martin Johnson Heade, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, George Inness, Francis A. Silva, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Edward Mitchell Bannister, among many others.

Northern neighbor

"Polar Bears (Ursus Maritimus) and the Arctic Imaginary" at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Center Street Gallery will display original artworks, photographs, carvings, and material culture depicting (or made from) the polar bear. British, German, Dutch, and American prints will join traditional Alaskan and Inupiat carvings; baskets made of whale baleen; historic photographs; decorated dinner plates; paintings; and even a pin cushion lined with polar bear fur.

Slipp said one highlight will be a recently conserved painting by Charles Sidney Raleigh titled "Intruder in the North” (1888), which shows polar bears observing a scene of arctic whaling.

The museum website notes that the intent of this exhibit is to "explore humankind's fascination with and relationship towards this elusive species. Due to their threatened status, this exhibition carries additional importance. In 2020, WWF estimated a mere 22,000 to 31,000 polar bears were living in the wild and this number is expected to decline by one third as soon as 2050."

For more information, go to whalingmuseum.org.