Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work
September 20, 2024-January 19, 2025
As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time 2024, the La Jolla Historical Society is organizing an extensive project on the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. The exhibition and accompanying catalog explores the Harrison’s juncture of art, science, ecology, and social activism, and will focus on the Harrisons' California work produced between the late 1960s and the 2000s. At a time when ecology was becoming a fashionable topic, the Harrisons pushed conceptual art in new directions, from their efforts to make topsoil—endangered in many places—to their transformation of a Pasadena debris basin into a recreational area. The couple, who met while working at the University of California San Diego, agreed that they would do no work that did not benefit the ecosystem. Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work will rediscover the Harrisons' breakthrough ecological concepts and techniques through re-staged performance artworks, drawings, paintings, photography, collages, maps, archival documentation of large-scale installations, and unrealized proposals for real-world ecological solutions. This multi- venue exhibition will include presentations at the La Jolla Historical Society, San Diego Public Library Central Library Gallery, California Center for the Arts Escondido, and the Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego. Curated by Titiana Sizonenko.
About Pacific Standard Time. Focused on the intersection of science and art, the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time (PST) 2024 will be the third regional collaboration in the series. This iteration will present an ambitious range of exhibitions and public programs that explores the connections between the visual arts and science, which have long shared moments of unity, conflict, and mutual insight. This PST theme connects these moments and creates an opportunity for civic dialogue around the urgent problems of our time.
For additional information see the Getty Foundation.
“Listening to The Web of Life”/ Interdisciplinary Workshop/ March 17-18, 2022
In preparation of the exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, an international group of ecological artists, writers, and scholars gathered in La Jolla to reflect on the theme “Listening to the Web of Life” (in Newton Harrison’s directive). Taking themes central to the Harrisons’ work as a point of departure, the workshop addressed such issues as the relationship between art and science in the field of Ecological Art, environmental justice, possible frameworks for an ecological art practice in the Anthropocene, and visual culture in Environmental Sciences.
Click the links below to view the recorded workshop proceedings.
VIDEO 1: Day 1: Poiesis of Knowledge and Visual Culture in Environmental Sciences
Participants will explore complexities in the relationship between art and science, comparing and contrasting the processes of knowledge-production, modes of thought, and ways of seeing in Environmental Science and Ecological Art.
Schedule
Introduction: Heath Fox, Lauren Lockhart, and Tatiana Sizonenko
Keynote Lecture: Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, “Thinking Ecology with Art: Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s Prophetic Works 1970-85.”
Roger Malina, “Humans are Badly Designed to Understand the Universe: Let’s Start by Redesigning Human Nature.”
Monica Manolescu, “Aesthetic Agency and Literary Expression in the Harrisons: Poetics and Politics.”
Tim Collins, “Ideas and Provocations in Environmental Artsworking.”
Art Miller, “Perspectives on the Influence of Art on Science: If there is no Art in Science, I’m out of a job!”
Brandon Ballengée, “Searching for Ghosts of the Gulf.”
Judit Hersko, “A Story About Stories.”
Lucy HG Solomon and Cesar Baio (Cesar & Lois), “Connecting Human and Nonhuman Intelligences.”
Ruth Wallen, “Walking with Trees.”
Reiko Goto, “Empathic Relationships with Non-Human Others.”
Alexander Gershunov, “Collaboration of Art and Climate Science in the Anthropocene.”
VIDEO 4: Day 2: Aesthetic Agency
Participants will discuss the possibilities of ecological art practices in the Anthropocene, the modern age in which human activity has vastly influenced the climate and where the pressure of global warming on all planetary systems is frightening and alarming. Specifically, participants will explore the dimensions of aesthetic agency and what it means for an artist to work in the domains of science, urban planning, design, and policy development.
Schedule
Introduction: Tatiana Sizonenko, “Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison: Artistic Metaphors and Climate Change Science.”
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Helen and Newton Harrison: To Bring Forth a New State of Mind.”
David Haley, “Metapoiesis: Art that Yields to Life.”
Petra Kruse and Kai Reschke, “Means of Communicating Ecological Art to the Public and to Decision-Makers: Is It Possible to Create Common Awareness and Bring About Specific Changes?
Newton Harrison, “To Give Back More Than We Take, A Sensorium for the World Ocean.”
VIDEO 5: Day 2: Aesthetic Agency
Participants will discuss the possibilities of ecological art practices in the Anthropocene, the modern age in which human activity has vastly influenced the climate and where the pressure of global warming on all planetary systems is frightening and alarming. Specifically, participants will explore the dimensions of aesthetic agency and what it means for an artist to work in the domains of science, urban planning, design, and policy development.
Schedule
David Familian, “Systems Thinking.”
Betsy Damon, “Igniting Creativity, Complexity in Action.”
Lillian Ball, “Mangrove Rescue in Bimini: Connecting Art, Restoration, and Community.”
Cathy Fitzgerald and Nikos Patedakis, “Dangerous Creativity: Advancing Transformative Wisdom-Based Learning
for Sustainable Cultural Renewal from the Haumea Ecoversity.”
