Natural World is an expansive collaboration between visual artists David Hartt (Canadian, lives/works Philadelphia, b. 1967) and John Edmonds (American, lives/works New York, b. 1989), poet Jason Allen-Paisant, and curator Nathaniel M. Stein. In new photographs, textiles, sculptures, site-specific installations, and an artist-designed publication, the collaborators reflect on relationships between identity, institutions and their collections, ways of knowing and telling stories, and ideas about nature and naturalness. Their overlapping dialogues with the museum’s collections suggest that we learn—and can unlearn—what we perceive to be natural about the ideas and worlds we make and inhabit. Edmonds’s project, Father’s Jewels Continue reading Natural World

1,000 miles per hour; the approximate speed of the Earth’s rotation at the equator. Two milestone projects of design from the 1970s, Voyager Golden Record and Powers of Ten, act as pivot points for a collection of works by contemporary artists that take on the challenge of recording our world.

Throughout this exhibition, featuring artworks from the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, the vantage points and relative scale shift. Several artworks relate more clearly through a shared relationship to space, beyond... Continue reading 1,000 miles per hour

In the exhibition, Collecting and Receiving, the works of Mohammed Kazem and Cristiana de Marchi reflect on the memory of collecting and receiving light in architectural and urban settings across the globe. Internationally recognized in the field, both artists created new works for this exhibition, reflecting on a globally-connected cultural economy drastically altered through the global pandemic. The exhibition also features response artworks by FLAG studio artists Joe Girandola, Jeremy Schulz, Dan Reidy, and Larry Collins. Mohammed Kazem (b. 1969, Dubai) studied painting as a teenager at the Emirates Fine Art Society, Sharjah, and music in the... Continue reading Collecting and Receiving

In Circum-Verdant, PhotograpHERS, a women’s photographic collective, imagines a world with a dramatically-different relationship between “man”-kind and the environment, one where nature is nurtured and nurtures in return. The artists redesign the globe in its own image: ornamenting the sphere with images taken over the last two years, articulated in individual forms, creating patterns in its own reliable geometries.  The installation accumulates over time, beginning with a nexus-like collage made up of natural and botanical images captured by the women’s art collective, before being opened for contributions from students and community members. Collaboratively, they build a new... Continue reading Circum-Verdant

Once among the most polluted bodies of water in the United States, Mill Creek has drastically shifted from the past 50 years of conservation efforts. The creek was originally named Makateewa by the Shawnee of this area meaning “black,” most likely due to the coloration of leaves that would naturally fall and dye the water darker. At the turn of the last century the water ran black again due to industrial waste from meatpacking, tanning, and sewage. There was never a mill to speak of on the creek, but was named that way to attract development. It did:... Continue reading Makateewa Dreamscape