The Altered Landscape: Selections from the Carol Franc Buck Collection from Nevada Museum of Arts

November 10th 2002 to February 23rd 2003

RENO, NV - No subject has been more prominent or passionate within the history of American Art than landscape. This was particularly the case in the West where the notion of wilderness helped foster our national identity. For generations, photographers such as Carleton E. Watkins, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams have played a role in how we perceive the landscape. Among recent landscape photographers are those whose aesthetic concerns have pushed beyond the boundaries of the conventionally beautiful to create powerful images of intellectual and emotional content.

Over the past decade, the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) has been assembling a collection of landscape photography that explores the diverse strategies taken by contemporary artists in articulating their views of human presence in the environment. From October 10 – December 5, 1999, the NMA will debut The Altered Landscape: Selections from the Carol Franc Buck Collection by presenting a selection of over 70 photographs drawn from this extensive and unique collection.

The collection focuses on the topography of the New West and examines different methods for approaching it, including aerial photography, rephotography, and the directorial approach. The collection also focuses on different subject matter within the landscape including earthworks, environmental crises or natural disasters, and land development, among others. A number of rephotographs of scenes from throughout the Great Basin emphasize how land has been transformed over time and how we perceive these transformations. Included are works by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, and Frank Gohlke, along with other photographers who have responded to the tradition of the “man-altered” landscape in different ways including Peter Goin, Mark Klett, Patrick Nagatani, Terry Evans, Emmet Gowin, Barbara Bosworth, and Catherine Wagner.

COLLECTION HISTORY

In the early 1990s, the NMA embarked on a goal to build a focus collection that would address man’s presence in the environment. Because the NMA’s permanent collection centers on the aesthetic articulation of the land and environment, curators recognized the importance of investing and concentrating on landscape photography. The goal of the collection was to recognize the contribution that photographic artists have made to our understanding of place and environment. Now less than a decade later, the Altered Landscape collection numbers more than 600 photographs, making up the largest focus area within the NMA’s permanent collection.

The Altered Landscape collection traces its historical roots to the influential exhibition of landscape photography titled New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape exhibited at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York in 1975. At that time, photographers such as Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke, and Joe Deal challenged the long-standing tradition of presenting the landscape as a beautiful and pristine wilderness. Instead, they focused on residential and industrial (or man-altered) landscapes and the idea of using photography to express an artist’s views about the land. The NMA’s collection follows this tradition in its often stunning and beautiful ways, from its beginnings through the different directions the movement has taken over the past three decades.

CATALOGUE

A full-color, 143 page book titled The Altered Landscape will accompany the exhibition. The book is edited by Peter E. Pool and published by the Nevada Museum of Art in association with the University of Nevada Press. The book introduces The Altered Landscape collection and outlines the evolution of the collection and the aesthetic and historical motivations for its creation. The book will be available for purchase at the Museum Store of the Nevada Museum of Art as well as the University of Nevada Press for $49.95 (hard cover only).

Essays by three renowned scholars explore the themes of the collection from the perspectives of their various disciplines. Historian Patricia Nelson Limerick discusses the wide-ranging historical and cultural implication of the “alteration” of the landscape of the American West, tracing ambivalent American attitudes toward nature and the land far back to their European roots in Christian theology and the Romantic imagination. Dave Hickey examines photographic art in the context of the Western design of nature, considering the cultural and intellectual concepts of “landscape” and the ways that photographers through the history of this medium have been influenced by those concepts. Art historian Thomas W. Southall considers the place of The Altered Landscape photographers in the larger history of landscape photography, especially the ways an “honest” medium like photography has been manipulated to express the values – aesthetic or political – of the photographers.

FUNDING

This exhibition and accompanying book are made possible by a generous grant from the Carol Franc Buck Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Media sponsorship is provided by the KNPB Channel 5 and Nevada Appeal. The exhibition was organized by Diane Deming, Curator, Nevada Museum of Art; Peter E. Pool, Trustee, Nevada Museum of Art and collector and Peter Goin, Trustee, Nevada Museum of Art and Foundation Professor of Photography, University of Nevada, Reno.

The Nevada Museum of Art is a private, non-profit organization supported by the generosity of its membership as well as by sponsorships and grants. Through creative programming and scholarship, the NMA provides the opportunity for people to encounter, engage, and enjoy a diversity of art experiences. The NMA is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm, open Thursday evenings until 7 pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 12 to 4 pm. The galleries are closed on Mondays. These programs have been funded, in part, by NMA’s Pacesetter Corporate Donors: AMERCO, Camelot Party Rentals, International Game Technology (IGT), KOLO News Channel 8, KTHX Radio, Meadowood Mall, Nevada Bell, Nevada Mining Association, Seagrams America, Sierra Pacific, Southern Wine and Spirits, TCI of Nevada, Wells Fargo, and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada. The programs of the NMA have also been funded, in part, by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council and the Nevada Commission on Tourism, both state agencies, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday 12.00AM - 16.00AM

The address is: Karljohansvern, Horten

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