Billboard, Nevada
Bryan Schutmaat, American, born 1983
2012
Archival pigment print
1/3
Sheet: 40 × 50 in. (101.6 × 127 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Nancy and Thomas F. O’Neil III, Class of 1979
2014.66.33
Portfolio / Series Title
Grays the Mountain Sends
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
21st century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
Not on view
Label
Abandonment echoes around this small Nevada community. One-story buildings dot the desert plain before it rises precipitously into jagged, snow-speckled peaks. With this image, photographer Bryan Schutmaat questions the iconography of the West—towering mountains and the promise of a prosperous new life. Instead, the dilapidated billboard in the foreground, now decorated with an anonymous tombstone, personifies the desertion of rural America. The last remnants of a 1980s anti-drug campaign poster peel off its face: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS. ANY QUESTIONS??
From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022
GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022
Provenance
The artist, New York, New York; sold to Nancy and Thomas O'Neil III, Baltimore, Maryland, July 2, 2013; given to present collection, 2014.
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