Claimed: Land Use in Western America

Exhibition

Kate Meyer, curator

South Balcony, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

This selection of photographs, prints, and drawings from the Spencer’s permanent collection documents aspects of westward expansion and development as it emphasizes the notion that we treat nature as a commodity. The exhibition draws inspiration from the teaching and scholarship of Professor Donald Worster, Joyce & Elizabeth Hall Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas.

One theme that drives the exhibition and is integral to Worster’s research is the notion that American environmental history can best be understood as a function of political and economic culture. Natural resources are identified and exploited through diverse practices: mining, irrigation, cultivation, excavation. The marks we make upon the land take many forms: offices, reservoirs, parking lots, furrows, fences. These marks reveal the challenges, failures, and aspirations of a destiny made manifest in the land west of the Mississippi.

Exhibition images

Works of art

Adrian D. Clem (1906–1977), Construction Work Boulder Dam #4

George Charles Miller (1894–1965); Grant Wood (1891–1942); Associated American Artists (active 1934–2000), In the Spring

Edward Weston (1886–1958), Windmill, Taos

Lewis Baltz (1945–2014), New Irvine Industrial Parks, No. 12

Robert Adams (born 1937), Newly Occupied Tract Houses, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Terry Evans (born 1944), Cemetery, February 1991

Terry Evans (born 1944), Terraced Plowing with Grass Waterway, April 1991

Gordon H. Coster (1906–1988), untitled (aerial view of a field)

Robert Berkeley Green (1909–2007), Earth Song

David Wing (born 1947), Sunland, California

James Lyle Enyeart (born 1943), Butler County, Flint Hills, No. 1

George Andrew Tice (1938–2025), Miner's Union Hall

Hampton F. Shirer (1894–1977), Erosion - Dory Hill Cemetery

Frank Gohlke (born 1942), Grain Elevators, Minneapolis I

William Henry Jackson (1843–1942), Cañon of the Rio Las Animas

Roger Minick (born 1944), Freeway Rain, San Bernardino, California

Jon Blumb (born 1956); Joseph Judd Pennell (1866–1922), Andrew Engstrom Corn Field

Jon Blumb (born 1956); Joseph Judd Pennell (1866–1922), Tom Flanagan's Monument

William Henry Jackson (1843–1942), Moraines on Clear Creek, Valley of Arkansas, Colorado

Mark Klett (born 1952); JoAnn Verburg (born 1950), Clear Creek Reservoir, Colorado

John Vachon (1914–1975), Texhoma, Texas. Wheat Storage in the Northern Panhandle

Robert Frank (1924–2019), U.S. 285, New Mexico

Keith Jacobshagen (born 1941), Irrigation Ditch, East of Ashland, All Souls Day 1982, A Drive with Paula

Adolf Arthur Dehn (1895–1968); Lawrence Lorus Barrett, Boulder Damn [sic]

Peter Hurd (1904–1984), Stock Well at Dusk

Louis Lozowick (1892–1973), Granaries to Babylon

J. Jay McVicker (1911–2004), Oklahoma Twilight

James Milford Zornes (1908–2008), The Pattern Makers

Wanda Hammerbeck (born 1945), Evidence of Water Not Seen

Patricia DuBose Duncan (1932–2021), Threshing Wheat at the Agricultural Hall of Fame

Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), A Western Landscape

Edward Ruscha (born 1937), Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Los Angeles

Events

June 8, 2007

Talk

Images of the Plains: Culture, the Land, and its Uses

5:30–7:30AM

309 Auditorium

June 28, 2007

Social

Claimed: Land Use in Western America

5:30–6:30PM

309 Auditorium

July 12, 2007

Screening

Documentary Films: The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River

7:00–9:00PM

309 Auditorium

August 28, 2007

Talk

Claimed

309 Auditorium

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute

Episode 107 Jun-2007, Kate Meyer I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Which force is more prevalent, the influence of culture on the landscape or the influence of the landscape on culture? A summer exhibition at the Spencer grapples with this question, offering a consideration of land use acknowledging our treatment of nature as a commodity. Claimed: Land Use in Western America draws inspiration from the teaching and scholarship of Donald Worster, Joyce & Elizabeth Hall Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas. A driving theme of Worster’s research and this exhibition is the perception that American environmental history can best be understood as a function of our political and economic culture. The photographs, drawings, and prints in the exhibition, by such artists as Grant Wood, Ed Ruscha, and Terry Evans, reveal aspects of land use and regional identity. Short texts accompanying the images offer additional thoughts about the use of natural resources and the challenges inherent in the land itself. The selected images and texts are intended to give viewers a variety of perspectives on American land use and misuse. Claimed is on view at the Spencer through August 12. With thanks to Kate Meyer for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.

Exhibition images

Works of art

Events

Resources

Audio

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Claimed: Land Use in Western America

Exhibition Overview

Exhibition images

Works of art

Events

Resources

Audio

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