The ideas of sustainability and a focus on ecology might not be new, but an exhibition with displays at the La Jolla Historical Society and UC San Diego looks to provide a new view on some older perceptions of those concepts.
In a project more than five years in the making, with partnerships with more than 50 cultural, educational and scientific institutions throughout Southern California, the two La Jolla venues will participate in a regionwide arts initiative presented by the Getty Foundation known as “PST Art: Art & Science Collide.”
Exhibit subjects in the PST — previously Pacific Standard Time — initiative will range from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi to environmental justice to artificial intelligence.
California-based art will be on display in La Jolla starting Thursday, Sept. 19, in an exhibition titled “Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work.”
The show will explore the junction of art and science, ecology and social activism through the work of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, a husband-and-wife team who were among the earliest and most notable “ecological artists.”
This will be the first exhibit to focus on their California work — nearly 20 projects produced between the late 1960s and 2000s — through restaged performance artworks, drawings, paintings, photography, collages, maps, archival documentation of large-scale installations and unrealized proposals for real-world ecological solutions.
To showcase the full extent of the Harrisons’ works, the immersive four-part exhibition will be presented in four locations around San Diego County simultaneously, including “Urban Ecologies” at the La Jolla Historical Society, “Future Gardens” at the Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego, “The Prophetic Works” at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido and “Saving the West” at the San Diego Central Library Art Gallery downtown.
The Historical Society, at 780 Prospect St., will present “Urban Ecologies” from Sept. 19 through Sunday, Jan. 19. The documentation of the Harrisons’ processes and replications of their systems will be shown, along with plantings on the front lawn that replicate the portable orchard they designed.
The Mandeville Art Gallery, at 9500 Gilman Drive, will present “Future Gardens” from Saturday, Sept. 28, to Saturday, Dec. 7. The exhibit will speak to environmental threats to Earth’s many ecosystems. Original drawings, photo-text s, photographs and conceptual design proposals will be on display.
“Within the larger retrospective, at the La Jolla Historical Society we are focusing only on early works of the Harrisons’ collaboration,” said curator Tatiana Sizonenko. “Newton was the sculptor and painter and Helen was an educator but also a scholar of literature and linguistics. She was very active in feminism and in activism such as the peace movement and all kinds of other movements in the late 1950s.”
The two started working side by side on complementary works but soon started working together. Among their collaborations were a “soup machine,” a makeshift ecological system that provides a place for shrimp to grow, a process to replicate the visual effects of aurora borealis, and a system to make soil for new plants — long before concepts of sustainability were the norm.
“We are honored to be able to be a host for the largest, most comprehensive retrospective ever presented of the Harrisons,” said Historical Society Executive Director Lauren Lockhart. “I’m hopeful and confident that it will raise awareness of their work, because I think they’re under-recognized.”
She added that their messaging is as current as ever, despite being made decades ago.
“Looking at their work and how it’s experienced today and its relevance today, something that I think is really important is that they advocated for this idea of individual responsibility to care for the environment to listen to nature and be responsive,” Lockhart said. “They took these actions [through] performance, sometimes through two-dimensional work, but all made with the intention that how can we, Helen and Newton, do something to improve the environment.
“I think today it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the problems we face … in of climate change in particular, and it makes it easy to dismiss. They pose the question of what will my one individual action do to make a difference? Helen and Newton … [thought] that it is our responsibility — we all have to own that, and if we work collaboratively and we take these steps, [we] can make a difference.”
Also coming to La Jolla as part of the PST Art initiative is “For Dear Life: Art, Medicine and Disability” from Sept. 19 to Feb. 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. That will be featured in an story.
For more information about the Harrison exhibition, visit pst.art, lajollahistory.org or mandevilleartgallery.ucsd.edu. ♦
