Art Doctor: Honoring Matthew Coolidge and the Center for Land Use Interpretation

At the University of Southern California and in institutions of higher education in America, there is a long-standing tradition of granting honorary degrees to worthy individuals. According to James Freedman, president emeritus of the University of Iowa and Dartmouth College, “In bestowing an honorary degree, a university makes an explicit statement to its students and the world about the qualities of character and attainment it admires most, [celebrating] distinguished and sublime achievement.” At USC, such degrees are awarded to “honor individuals who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary achievements… [and] outstanding contributions to the welfare and development” of their communities. This week, as commencement ceremonies approach I put forth a nominee for an honorary doctoral degree in fine arts at the University of Southern California, my home institution.

The founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Matthew Coolidge is one of the most prominent figures of contemporary art in America. Since 1994, the CLUI has been active in various regions in the country, examining the use and misuse of the landscape, while forming and maintaining a record that speaks to both our society and the changing environment. According to the official website, “the Center employs a variety of methods to pursue its mission, engaging in research, classification, extrapolation, and exhibition.” Past projects and exhibits range from Emergency States, an examination of small-scale towns made to train police and fire fighters for times of disaster, to The Best Dead Mall in America (pictured below), a photographic survey of an abandoned 800,000 square foot mall in Harvey, Illinois, to Antarctic 1 (pictured above), a look at the infrastructure of Antarctica’s first highway, and Proximity Issue, a series of digital photographs of the barricades that encircle the landmarks of the nation’s capitol after September 11, 2001. For more than a decade, the CLUI has been gathering and distributing vital and often overlooked information regarding humanity’s relationship to its environment. “People don't have all the facts, because how you get those facts is very much under the control of a limited number of people,” explains Coolidge in a 1998 interview. “What ‘The Center’ is doing is about information…. And so, in some ways we are trying to address the issue of the amount of information we are given, and the imbalance and control of information.”

In 1991, Coolidge received his bachelor degree in environmental, film, and contemporary art studies at Boston University. His diversified educational background has allowed him an artistic practice that is informed and unique, defying the boundaries between art, science, publishing and curating. This multidisciplinary quality is one that has been highly celebrated by the USC Roski School of Fine Arts in the past years. In fact, according to the USC Strategic Plan, the university as a whole boasts of its "strong reputation for interdisciplinary research and scholarship." The university's Renaissance Scholars Program, for example, has been honoring bright students,"whose majors and minors are from widely separated fields of study," since May 2000, awarding more than $90,000 each year. In the case of the School of Fine Arts, the most recent additions to the fulltime faculty include Adrea Zittel, whose work combines notions of art, architecture, design and sustainable living, as well as Charlie White and Sharon Lockhart, who move across boundaries of production, film and photography. Coolidge fits perfectly amongst them.

Of course, skeptics may argue that Coolidge’s efforts at the CLUI, which include those of a project director, curator, writer and photographer, cannot be defined as an artistic practice, particularly since the Center, in Coolidge's words, “exists within the institutional realm, [and works] to maintain an apparent neutrality and institutional objectivity.” In contemporary art, however, interdisciplinary boundaries undergo such constant and drastic changes that it becomes difficult and somewhat futile to give much thought to what is and is not art. Despite the institutional feel of Matthew Coolidge’s work, he is indeed a recognized figure in the world of fine arts. Under his direction, the Center has received numerous grants including support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Annenberg Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Coolidge was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2004 and a media arts fellowship in 2005 from the Rockefeller Foundation and National Media Resources. In 2006, he was awarded the Lucelia Artist Award by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an honor that has been shared by only five other artists, which include USC’s own Andrea Zittel. In describing him, Smithsonian director Elizabeth Broun states, “Matthew Coolidge represents the qualities that the Lucelia Artist Award seeks to reward–creative innovation and work that dares to address issues relevant in contemporary society.” In granting an honorary degree, USC, too, looks to pay tribute to these qualities.

Indeed, the work of this Los Angeles-based artist is not only exceptional, but of special relevance to the current human condition. Coolidge describes his efforts by noting, “we are really just working with the medium of landscape to explore social, societal, and philosophical issues.” The fundamental goal of the Center is to "increase and diffuse knowledge about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived." It is this unwavering commitment to society and the spread of information across geopolitical barriers that make Matthew Coolidge the perfect candidate to be honored by the University of Southern California. And whom better to pass knowledge and unwavering passion onto than graduating students? I believe that Coolidge's speech will be not only inspiring, but of universal appeal, merging art and science, the unknown and the mundane. It will be an important accomplishment for the University of Southern California to acknowledge Coolidge's distinguished artistic efforts in addressing, saving and honoring our environment. Afterall, a main purpose of the honorary degree is to "elevate the university in the eyes of the world by honoring individuals who are highly regarded for achievements in their respective fields of endeavor."

Art Taking on the Environment: Politicians Turn to the Efforts of Visual Artists to Help Shape Environmental Policies

Opening this month at the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, Subhankar Banerjee’s exhibition, Resource Wars in the American Arctic, features four of his stunning and monumental photographs, captured during five years of travel through largely untouched regions in Northeastern Alaska. In 2002, Banerjee began his nearly four thousand miles journey through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in search of concrete evidence of plant and animal life in the 19.5-million-acre region. What began as an attempt by a Boeing scientist turned amateur photographer to study the ecological and cultural diversity of the ANWR soon “evolved into a visual exploration of the Arctic ’s connection to larger global issues such as resource wars, global warming, toxic migration and human rights struggles of the indigenous northern communities.” As such, Banerjee’s photographs have been the subject of critical and public acclaim, as well as condemnation from many politicians and institutions. According to Regina Hackett of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, in 2003 “the artist was horrified to find himself denounced in Congress and virtually abandoned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of History,” where his photographs were to be exhibited for the first time. Under pressure from Congress, the museum not only removed all captions, for they contained language that advocated no oil drilling in the refuge, but changed the location of the exhibition in an attempt to limit its viewing. Perhaps it was this very reaction that placed Banerjee’s work in the spotlight for which he had been hoping.

As politicians in favor of oil drilling in the region tried to paint a picture of the ANWR as a barren land devoid of life, Banerjee's photographs provided irrefutable evidence of the refuge's fragile and unmatched beauty and rich ecological diversity. A month before his opening at the Smithsonian, “during a Senate debate about drilling for gas and oil in the refuge, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) held up a Banerjee photo of a polar bear crossing a frozen harbor. This was a response to drilling advocates, who claimed there was nothing there but…‘a flat white nothingness,’ [or in the words of Alaska’s former Senator Frank Murkowsky,]…‘a frozen wasteland of snow and ice.’”

This is not the first time that the work of an artist has been brought to the Senate floor in order to help shape policy. Photography, in particular, has historically enjoyed a prominent place in the country’s legislature. In the late 19th century, for example, photographer William Henry Jackson (his work shown on the left) was commissioned to travel west as part of the U.S. Geological Survey. Upon his return, his photographs were presented to the U.S. Congress, and "on March 1, 1872 President Grant signed a bill making the region [that Jackson had been exploring] Yellowstone National Park.” Likewise, the works of photographic giants like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange were highly celebrated and influential in both houses. Banerjee, however, did not receive what Hackett calls the “warm Welcome” of his predecessors. It seems that there has been a grand shift in the workings of our legislative branch and our perception of photography since the time of William Henry Jackson. While in the past photographers were seen and respected as capturers of irrefutable truths, today, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens openly calls Banerjee and his supporters, such as Jimmy Carter, “liars,” publicly threatening them as well as his colleagues who voted against the ANWR drilling.

Thankfully, what Peter Brown of the Front-page news calls a “climate of intimidation” does not have a hold on all institutions around the world. Indeed, in many cases, artists are still viewed as agents of truth, esteemed by politicians and advocates who utilize their creative abilities as a means to deliver a message to a larger audience. It seems that, in recent years, art and environmental protection have formed a new and significant bond. In June of this year, in celebration of the annual UN World Environment Day, the Natural World Museum, in partnership with the UN Environment Program, the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, will present an exhibition of international contemporary artists, entitled Envisioning Change. According to an official press release by the UNEP website, the exhibit “is designed to generate awareness of global warming and climate change while inspiring positive change in people’s attitudes and actions toward the environment.” What is refreshing about the choice of the forty participating artists is that not all are known for their interest in environmental issues. While artists like Banerjee and David Nash (his Wooden Boulder featured on the right) are, of course, included, it is both surprising and intriguing to see such names as Mona Hatoum and Yoshiaki Kaihatsu on the list.

The artists in this exhibition are not merely documenting. They are utilizing all forms of expression, from abstraction to extrapolation, to create, to inform, and to claim a right to the preservation of their planet. Their efforts help secure the artistic community as a whole a unique place in the global fight to save our ecosystem. We are now at the threshold of a new era of environmental and political transformation, one in which we must take bold actions to generate international and interdisciplinary solutions to fight off the threats posed by our changing climate. The actions described above, though of great importance, are only tips of the iceberg.