BETSY STIRRATT

In the last few years, I have photographed in natural history and medical collections and this activity has been the basis of my work as I explore natural and social histories through photographs, books, paintings, objects and film. While studying plant, animal and human samples, I try to tease out the connections between the collecting impulse, scientific discovery and classification. This has inspired me to create multiple layered narratives about the interactions of humans and nature.

I am interested in the power of plant, animal and human collections as they contain the keys to understanding the history of the earth and how we might create resilience in the face of disastrous climate change. The samples in museums and archives that have been gathered by scientists over hundreds of years, often unethically, hold a quiet power that is invaluable to our study of the planet. By collecting and documenting natural specimens, and by examining the processes by which these are catalogued, classified and tagged, I scrutinize the fraught relationship humans have with the natural world.

This installation was part of “Truly in all Sincerity” at the Grunwald Gallery of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington.

In Unearthing, I explore how natural and cultural objects are presented in collections and museum settings, and how we preserve, classify, and display them. I have visited many natural history, herbaria and medical museums in Europe and the US with the aim of understanding their objectives, collecting impulses, and labelling practices. With similar intent, I visited several regional historical sites and collections, including the Workingmen’s Institute in New Harmony, the Indiana University Paleontology Collection, and Angel Mounds. The resulting photographs and objects demonstrate the sometimes-underestimated importance of local and regional history within the broader museum world.

The items within a museum or private collection are accumulated with a view to imposing order, classifying nature, preserving memory, or in some instances signaling status. Items may be preserved for their cultural and historical importance, or for their aesthetic qualities. For some, collecting serves as a means of accumulating knowledge, or as inspiration for their imagination and memories. For me, it’s the embedded history of objects and places, and how history and folklore can inform our relationship with the world.

More specifically, I’m interested in the idea of both documenting collected items and using the documentation process to create new artifacts: a coupling of curation and creation, as it were. Influenced by my many years as a gallery director and curator, I think about the way that art and objects are selected and placed in juxtaposition with each other and how they are subsequently perceived by viewers. It is important to acknowledge that the viewer’s experience is shaped by the inclusion or exclusion of objects and the information that accompanies them.

The videos in the exhibit were all made using three artists books that contain words and pictures about collections I have visited: specifically botany, anatomy and zoological collections. Each of the videos features the turning pages of the books in the Collected Series, interspersed with video and audio clips that I gathered from museum visits, educational films and from life.

Additionally, alongside the pieces inspired by museum collections and artifacts in this installation, I am including materials I have collected (e.g., a 19th c. herbarium, Victorian bird taxidermy, amateur butterfly collections) relating to my interest in history, natural history and the ways objects are preserved and presented within a curated setting. These items were gathered because in most cases they were made by an amateur who had some specific interest in the subject that he/she was preserving.

Collections and museums inform us about the world we live in, record the past and provide material memory across generations. Unearthing is an attempt to impose order on an unordered world, drawing upon hazy memory, inexact connections, and interpreted histories. The process of unearthing objects, both physically and metaphorically, can broaden people’s experience of and wonder at the world.

Unearthing, currently at the Tube Factory Art Space, Indianapolis, can be seen through March 19, 2023.

Archival pigment prints, oil on canvas, paper, linen cord, natural objects

Regimes of (dis)order is an installation based on the institutional archive. Through documentation and fabrication, I make works that examine nature and the natural order. I am interested in how organisms, plants, animals, and humans, are represented in texts and museum settings, and how we preserve, classify and display them.

Peeler Galleries, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN

The history of the Workingmen’s Institute and New Harmony is well documented by a number of historians and scholars. Nature Morte has provided an opportunity to temporarily relocate some of the natural history collection at the Workingmen’s Institute and feature it inside the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. It is a chance to both reexamine these collections and to think about how we interpret art, artifacts and place. The introduction of these natural history specimens within an art gallery context allows us to think about them in a different way, altering our understanding of their value and function in science.