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Global cultures 1980–now
Course: Global cultures 1980–now > Unit 1
Lesson 13: Landscape and ecology- Desert to Suburb, framing the American Dream
- Mark Dion, Neukom Vivarium
- Mapping nature's stunning beauty
- A desert on fire, Salgado photographs Kuwait
- Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe
- James Turrell, Skyspace, The Way of Color
- Endangered coastlines and lifeways
- Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation
- Inspiration at Yosemite
- Binh Danh, Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite CA, May 31, 2012
- The landscape remade, Thiebaud's Ponds and Streams
- Noel Harding, The Elevated Wetlands
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Mapping nature's stunning beauty
Maya Lin's Silver Upper White River sculpture at Crystal Bridges Museum shines with recycled silver, reflecting the geography of the Upper White River. This artwork, part of a series mapping global rivers, blends art, architecture, and environmental awareness. Lin's use of precious silver highlights the value of our water systems. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Video transcript
(light piano music) - [Presenter] We're at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in a gallery that is
actually a bridge spanning a body of water looking at Maya Lin's Silver Upper White River. This is a large sculpture
that extends across an enormous wall. - [Presenter] It's 20 feet wide. There's something really special about getting to work with an object like this in the real space of this bridge gallery where the water is going right by and on days when it's
sunny and the conditions are just right you get reflections that make the whole piece sparkle. - [Presenter] The sculpture's almost like a large piece of jewelry,
but it is actually representational; it
represents the geography of the Upper White River, part of an enormous river system. - [Presenter] This starts
in the Boston Mountains here in Arkansas, it runs up
north into southern Missouri and then back down into
Arkansas before it opens up onto the Mississippi
and this is a huge part of the landscape in this country and the different bodies
of water that are on here we have direct interactions
with, Beaver Lake is the big source of drinking water for this area. - [Presenter] Which we
can see on the lower left of the sculpture. And so this has deep roots in this place. - [Presenter] When Maya
Lin was first coming to visit Crystal Bridges,
she was flying over this site and she looked out and
saw this stretch of water. And when she landed, she asked, "What was that that I was seeing?" And she learned that it
was the Upper White River. And she said, "I need to do
a work inspired by that." - [Presenter] Now this is
part of a series of sculptures that map major river
systems around the world. She did another sculpture
of the Yangtze in China produced with pins. The Chesapeake, an estuary,
not so much a river system, was rendered in marbles. Maya Lin's career exists in
this really unusual space that includes both art and architecture. - [Presenter] I think you
see from the first work that she creates on a grand
scale, the Vietnam Memorial. This is not a monument that
sits on top of the land, but this is a monument that
is part of the land itself. And this engagement with the environment is something that stays
consistent throughout her career. - [Presenter] When we
look at the sculpture, because it's silver,
because it's so reflective, the sculpture changes as I move across it. The organic nature of the
river is made so vivid here. The tributaries are tendril-like, there is something anthropomorphic
about this sculpture as she isolates the water
from the land around it, creating this sculpture that is both a map and an abstraction. - [Presenter] The work itself
has this really amazing presence and I think that at
times it almost feels like veins in a body. There's so many different ways that we can understand this work. Maya Lin is very intentional about the materials that she
uses and here she's using recycled silver. Silver is a precious material. We know when we see silver
that this is something with value and so she's
equating that significance of the material with the significance of these bodies of water
that she's representing. She talks about how when European settlers first came to the Americas,
they talked about how abundant the fish were,
the waters running silver because of all the fish that were in it. - [Presenter] But of course
silver has been recycled, reused, because it's a currency,
for thousands of years, just like gold, and in a
sense, just like the water of this system, this
water has recycled through evaporation, through
clouds and rain into rivers over and over again just
like this silver has probably been coins and sculptures and jewelry for thousands of years. - [Presenter] The material
itself has had many lives. When Maya Lin chooses to use
specifically recycled silver, she's taking all of that
history that's built into that material but then
also being exceptionally aware of the environmental
impact that she's having as she's selecting this recycled material as opposed to starting brand-new. - [Presenter] The
sanctity of these complex river systems is something
that needs to be preserved and it's part of a bigger
project that's important to the artist, what she
calls her last monument. A web-based project which
maps and memorializes species and natural systems
that are now either extinct or on the brink of extinction. I'm so grateful that Maya
Lin had that experience, was willing to communicate
it to the museum, and the museum in turn welcomed
this project with open arms. - [Presenter] It's the product
of Maya Lin's brilliance, her ability to see a moment
that she wants to capture and then her execution of that in a way that is really quite
remarkable and stunning. (light piano music)