Lately, museums have been exploring our complicated, often rapacious relationship with the natural world. DC’s National Portrait Gallery is currently showing Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism, and last year the Brandywine Museum of Art mounted an exhibition titled Fragile Earth. Mirroring this trend in ecocritical scholarship, PAFA’s current offering is the deeply researched Layers of Liberty: Philadelphia and the Appalachian Environment.

"Curated by West Virginia native Ali Printz, PAFA’s Terra Foundation Curatorial Fellow, the exhibition was motivated by a dearth of Appalachian art in museums, noteworthy since nearly 70 percent of Pennsylvania lies in this vast region encompassing 13 states. On view here are works by 41 artists that examine the ecology of early America and the transportation network created by and contributing to the use, misuse, and commodification of the region’s abundant resources.

Layers of Liberty is in the museum’s expansive second-floor Annenberg Gallery, with works chronologically lining stark white walls. The large box-like gallery has no seating, and there is nothing visually striking about the overall installation. In fact, it’s somewhat daunting to see these 56 artworks stretching out before you. But once you enter and look closely, the exhibition’s historical, geographic, and artistic discoveries ameliorate its initial starkness."

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Read the full article "THE WORLD’S OLDEST MOUNTAINS GET A GALLERY AT LAST: PAFA presents Layers of Liberty: Philadelphia and the Appalachian Environment" online at broadstreetreview.com by Gail Obenreder (July 16, 2024). Layers of Liberty: Philadelphia and the Appalachian Environment is on view at PAFA until November 3, 2024. 

Featured Image: Hubert Davis, Spring in the Coal Regions, 1944, oil on canvas, 26” x 36”, 1945.2.