Helen & Newton Harrison: California Work
As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide, the San Diego Public Library’s Visual Arts Program presents Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, a retrospective exhibition about the work of husband-and-wife team Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.
Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is the first exhibition to focus on their California work, including nearly 20 projects produced between the late 1960s and 2000s. Presented as a multi-site exhibition in four locations around San Diego simultaneously, the exhibitions will examine the California works produced including: Urban Ecologies, The Prophetic Works, Saving the West, and Future Gardens.
Saving the West, presented at the San Diego Central Library will allow visitors to delve deeply into the series of works associated with the Harrisons’ research on the fragile and environmentally threatened ecologies of the Pacific Coast fog forest and the Sierra Nevada mountains. These bioregional works, mark the Harrisons’ growing interest in complex ecologies, the impacts of overexploitation and mismanagement of natural resources and the effects of global warming on the complex bionetworks of forests and watersheds. Works reveal the Harrisons’ concept of the Force Majeure and their increasing concern with the issue of global climate change.
Curated by Tatiana Sizonenko, PhD.
See more Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work at:
La Jolla Historical Society: September 19, 2024 – January 19, 2025
California Center for the Arts Escondido: September 21, 2024 – January 19, 2025
The Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego: September 28, 2024 – December 7, 2024.