smith.edu/artmuseum

January 31–August 31, 2014

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Photography is to seeing what poetry is

to writing: a concentrated way of thinking,

a condensed telling, a disciplined practice

that may produce insight.

All quotes and photographs by Anne Whiston Spirn (American, born 1947). All works are pigment prints on paper. © Anne Whiston Spirn | Cover: Glen Loy, Scotland. September 1978 | Inside Lower Left: Baker City, Oregon. May 2005 | Inside Top: Parc de Sceaux. Paris, France. May 1993 | Inside Middle: Vatnajökull. Skaftafell, Iceland. May 2008 | Inside Lower Right: Fairlight Pool. Sydney Harbor, Australia. August 1989 Backside Top Left: Saguaro National Park. Tucson, Arizona. April 1999 | Backside Bottom Left: Naiku, Ise, Japan. July 1990 | Mailing Panel: Saiho-ji. Kyoto, Japan. October 2001.

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EXHIBITION GUIDE

INTRODUCTION This exhibition showcases the photographic work of world-renowned writer, scholar, and landscape architect Anne Whiston Spirn. The author of several important books on landscape, Spirn is known for her multi-disciplinary practice that evolves from her photographic work. Her new book, The Eye Is a Door: Landscape, Photography, and the Art of Discovery, features this work and describes her approach.

This is the first major exhibition to explore how Spirn’s photographs encourage a deeper understanding of the natural and built environment through the development of visual literacy–the ability to read and analyze visual information. This approach to learning allows people to question and interpret what they see, which has broad implications across many fields of inquiry and design.

Spirn views photography as a tool that helps hone this ability by focusing attention on significant details in the landscape in order to discover the invisible. She has been on the forefront of the movement to make this kind of visual thinking a fundamental part of people’s daily lives.

As a teaching museum, Smith College Museum of Art is dedicated to nurturing visual literacy in an interdisciplinary environment.

Produced over the past 35 years, the images in the exhibition capture stories and ideas embodied in places the artist has visited for her research, which range from the volcanic landscapes of Iceland to sacred Buddhist gardens in Japan.

The 46 color images featured in the eye is a door connect such diverse topics as geology, biology, astronomy, anthropology, engineering, architecture, history, literary studies, global studies, studio art, and landscape studies.

THINKING VISUALLY WITH LANDSCAPE

Ideas to consider when viewing this exhibition.

ABOUT THE ARTISTAnne Whiston Spirn is a professor of landscape architecture and planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From the publication of her first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (1984) to The Language of Landscape (1998), her work has altered the way people think about city and nature, landscape and language, and urban design and planning. Her studies in art history at Radcliffe and the University of Pennsylvania and her photographic practice are at the root of her innovative approach to landscape studies and the built environment, which has been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship and the International Cosmos Prize for “contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and humankind.”

Seeing is a way of knowing;

photography is a way of thinking.

Why a door and not a window? A window is

something to look through, but a doorway is to

pass through; crossing a threshold, one enters

a new place. To see, to really see, is to open a

door. To pass through that door is to arrive

at a new understanding.

ObservationWhat do you see?Take a visual inventory and make note of details that stand out to you.

InterpretationWhat is going on in the image?How do the details you noticed connect to create a larger whole?

What patterns or anomalies can you discover?

Building a NarrativeWhat story does the image tell?What can the connections and patterns you discovered tell you about the history and life of this place?

What parts of the story do you still wonder about?For further information about this exhibition visit smith.edu/artmuseum

the eye is a door is supported by the SCMA Publications and Research Fund,

the Suzannah J. Fabing Programs Fund, the Judith Plesser Targan, class of 1953,

Art Museum Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Carlyn Steiner ‘67 and

George Steiner endowed Fund, in honor of Joan Smith Koch, and the Massachusetts

Cultural Council.