Everything but the mud

Jefferson’s non-geography lingers on. Destiny has traded in the panorama for the cyclorama, upgraded its tradecraft from images of green fields to green fields for images. But what of that former blank canvas, ‘the empty continent’? What structures have been backfilled into that vaunted space of freedom? This incomplete survey forsakes the Missouri’s main channel for the braided forks of minor tributaries, political and economic as much as hydrological.

Exhibited at Saint Louis Art Museum, November 15, 2019 through March 8, 2020 info here