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From romantic
19th century landscapes
to stark photographs of polluted rivers and depleted farmland, "Awakening
from the California Dream: An Environmental History" examines
changes in California’s environment over the past 150 years,
and the way these changes relate to the state’s social history.
This major photographic exhibition, based on a five-year project
by photographer Robert Dawson and writer Gray Brechin, is on view
at the Oakland Museum of California from February 20 through September
12, 1999. The exhibition includes 115 historical and contemporary images; related objects from the museum’s collection including railway and other transportation artifacts, mining equipment and small farm implements; and a 15-minute video. Dawson’s exceptional photographs and Brechin’s lively interpretive panels take visitors through time from a California of pristine natural beauty, through an era of damage inflicted by mining, agriculture, energy production and urbanization, to a hoped-for better future through the efforts of groups working to reverse environmental crises.
Brechin, Dawson and the museum’s Associate Director for Public Programs Phil Mumma, in conjunction with the production firm Image Design, created the video, which explores both historic and contemporary environmental issues. It describes how California in its natural state was perhaps the most favored place on earth - bountiful, beautiful and healthful - and how, over the past century and a half, areas have been massively transformed. The Los Angeles basin and Central Valley, as examples, are among the most thoroughly transformed areas in the world. The visitor to the exhibition travels through seven sections: "The Absence of Things" (loss due to destruction of wildlife, large-scale logging and the massacres of the state’s native peoples), "The Price of Gold" (mining), "Coerced Cornucopia" (agriculture), "The Luminous Net" (energy), "Alabaster Cities" (urbanization), "The Image of Health" (pollution) and "Alternative Courses" (the future).
As the first exhibition of its kind devoted to the environmental history of the state, Awakening from the California Dream will reflect upon the historical events and attitudes that have led to the degradation of the state’s environment. It serves as a logical follow-up to the museum’s 1998 Gold Rush exhibition and provides a springboard for dialogue on pertinent environmental issues facing California. While revealing what we have lost over the last 150 years, the exhibition also deals with how shifting attitudes can change the course of history and positively affect future environmental conditions. The exhibition is accompanied by Brechin and Dawson’s large-format book, "Farewell Promised Land: Awakening from the California Dream," published by University of California Press. The exhibition’s seven sections reflect chapters of the book, which includes many of the photos on exhibit. Writer Gray Brechin, a widely published journalist and television producer, received his doctorate in Geography at U.C. Berkeley in 1998. Robert Dawson is a nationally recognized photographer and teacher whose photographs are held in permanent collections of museums around the world. The Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize for documentary photography from Duke University, awarded to Brechin and Dawson in 1992, launched the project. Project director is Phil Mumma, Associate Director for Public Programs at the Oakland Museum of California, who organized last year’s National Gold Rush Symposium. Mumma has invited scholars and activists of differing perspectives to engage in issue-oriented discussions and problem solving related to the exhibition. Awakening from the California Dream made possible with support from the Oakland Museum Women's Board, East Bay Community Foundation, Fred Gellert Family Foundation, Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, LEF Foundation, and the Strong Foundation for Environmental Values.
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©
1999 Oakland Museum of California |