Ellen Harvey

Unlike many countries where the ruins of the past provide the foundation for the myths of the present, the United States has historically used its natural beauties to support a national narrative of redemption and transformation. Artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church, and Asher Durand used their paintings to favorably contrast the heroic splendor of the new world with the European reliance on the classical and medieval past for national and political legitimacy. This linkage of the natural world with the larger American national project is far from unproblematic, particularly in its depiction of the American continent as essentially “empty,” relegating Native Americans to a world of nature rather than of culture. Its emphasis on the aesthetic or picturesque value of sites also ignores the very real interdependence between the “viewer” and the “viewed,” even as it inspires much of the conservation efforts within the United States to this day, in particular the National Parks System. I will spend two months at the Smithsonian American Art Museum researching paintings of iconic U.S. natural sites in order to produce complementary paintings of those locations that reveal both the degree to which they have changed and to explore the ways in which these paintings have informed the collective narrative of our country. These paintings of natural sites will be included as part of my ongoing project entitled The Disappointed Tourist, which is a crowdsourced series of paintings of destroyed sites that people have nominated to be painted. My goal is to produce a traveling, on-going series of paintings that honors the trauma of the loss of our physical environment (both natural and man-made) to create a positive conversation that harnesses our love for place to create collective aspirations for preservation and creation.