Fall Programming
Hear from artists, scientists, historians for perspectives on the Freshwater exhibition. This series of talks takes a deeper look into contemporary artistic practice and implications and complex relationships of freshwater mussels’ past, present and future on the ecosystem and our lives considered through this layered exhibition. Registration and dates will be posted in the coming months.
Art Talk: Past—Overconsumption: How the Pearl Button Industry and Pollution Destroyed Mussel Species
In the 19th century the pearl button industry obliterated freshwater mussel populations in the midwest, while in the northeast industrial pollution poisoned the Delaware River for a generation. Drawing on material histories and conservation science, Freshwater is a reflection on the compounding effects of industrial waste and overconsumption. This talk takes a look at the past of freshwater mussels brought to light through Freshwater with historians who specialize in the pearl button industry and the history of industrial pollution on the Delaware.
Art Talk: Present—Jean Shin's Artist Practice
Jean Shin speaks to her artistic practice and inspiration and the complex relationship to our surroundings conceptualized in Freshwater.
About Jean Shin
Known for her large-scale installations and public sculptures, artist Jean Shin transforms accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community or region, Shin amasses vast collections of an everyday object or material—Mountain Dew soda bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching its history of use, circulation and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s poetic yet epic creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the US, Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. She is a tenured Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute and holds an honorary doctorate from New York Academy of Art. Shin’s work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the forthcoming Frederic Church Award for her contributions to American art and culture. Her works have been highlighted in The New York Times and Sculpture Magazine, among others.
Art Talk: Future—Mussel Restoration along the Delaware River Watershed
Freshwater asks us to confront how the consequences of unchecked industrial excess can reverberate across generations, and how closely our lives are entangled with species that we can easily overlook. But Freshwater is also a tribute to the slow, necessary labor of restoration—to the work of numerous scientists and partners in the region that offer us all hope for a better future. This talk shares efforts to restore mussel beds and the health of the Delaware watershed with scientists guiding this work in the city of Philadelphia.
