Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: California condors and bears, music as art, bison take NYC
EXHIBITS: Forests, coasts, deserts and cities
The Golden State of California has a wildly diverse ecology. Within an hour’s drive one can swim at the beach then ski down a mountain, after driving through dense urban cities and thriving Native reservations.
To celebrate these extremes, the California Academy of Sciences has a new permanent exhibition unveiled in late May, “California: State of Nature,” that highlights the web of connections between the species, places and people that enable California to thrive.
The new exhibition showcases the natural beauty of four distinct ecosystems with bold, modern and colorful artwork and design. Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge was drawn from a team of advisors representing communities across the state. Complimentary tickets are being offered to community members through the American Indian Cultural District.
Two augmented reality experiences bring huge nine-foot condors and stealthy bobcats to life inside the museum. Touch a real 100-foot-long blue whale skeleton. From the desert see a spiny lizard, red-tailed hawk, gila woodpecker, silver cholla cactus, barn owl, desert kit fox, and black-tailed jackrabbit.
The Shake House, an earthquake simulator – yes California has those, too – shows resilient structures in nature, and Monarch, the famed “last grizzly bear” of California, returns to public view for the first time since 2012 and marks the tragic 100-year anniversary of the species’ extinction due to targeted hunting. The grizzly’s extinction impacted ecosystems and the Indigenous populations across the state.
Video kiosks show short films to introduce visitors to the scientists, tribal leaders, and community members working to protect and regenerate the biodiversity and natural spaces.
“From snow-covered peaks and rugged coastlines to scorching deserts, towering forests, and bustling cities, California is like nowhere else on Earth,” said Scott Sampson, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences. “Our newest exhibition, ‘California: State of Nature,’ is a love letter to the far-reaching beauty of the Golden State, bringing visitors face to face with some of our most iconic species, like grizzly bears and giant redwoods. We live in the most biologically diverse state in the nation, and people will depart the exhibition with a better understanding of the inextricable connections that interweave us with these myriad life forms. Yet many of these species are now in peril, and it is our sincere hope that visitors will also be moved to take action and join us on our mission to regenerate California.”
MUSIC: Mohawk art, love and documentaries
Versatile Indigenous Canadian musician Tom Wilson Tehahàhake, Mohawk, has written books, including his 2017 novel, “Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home,” which was adapted into a 2022 film documentary and is now presented as a stage musical at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius.
Wilson recently released one of the big numbers from that show, “Death Row Love Affair,” as a single, a preview of a new album he’ll be delivering later this year. In the show, co-conceived by Wilson and writer and actor Shaun Smyth, the song provides a powerful closer to Act One. Wilson’s rendition is an achingly honest rumination on the inevitability of endings to both love and life.
Who’s kiddin’ who about where love goes
Some speed away
Some are going down slow
Oh I’m going nowhere in this death row love affair
Wilson calls the song’s sentiments “words of love from the silence between heartbeats.” “Death Row Love Affair” is the latest installment in the Beautiful Scars project, an ongoing chronicle of the culture shock Wilson had when he discovered his Mohawk heritage had been kept from him by his adoptive parents. As a musician, he’s taken to branding himself as Tom Wilson Tehoháhake to better reflect that heritage (Tehoháhake being Mohawk for “two roads”). And he’s made the trials of people like him a key focus of his efforts as a musician, writer and visual artist.
“The intention of my writing, my music and my art is to reduce the gap between my Indigenous culture and colonialists to make a more patient, loving community,” he says.
He has played in bands like Junkhouse, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, and the Lee Harvey Osmond band, winner of a 2020 JUNO for their album “Mohawk.” As a songwriter, Wilson has been recorded by Sarah McLachlan, Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams, Billy Ray Cyrus and Mavis Staples.
A book on his fine art, “Mohawk Warriors, Hunters and Chiefs: The Art Of Tom Wilson Tehoháhake,” is available from New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions. His tour schedule and more information can be found on his website.
ART: Buffalo down … but not out
On June 5, World Environment Day, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota, unearthed a Public Art Fund work called “Attrition” at City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan to amplify the conversation around environmental stewardship and the urgent need for collective action.
Nestled in a raised bed of regional native grasses, Luger’s semi-sunken black metal 15-foot-long bison skeleton confronts the decimation of the bison population and its lasting impact on Indigenous communities and ecosystems. This destruction of a species from 60 million to less than 1,500, forcing tribes into Western culture, was heartbreakingly chronicled in Ken Burns’ documentary “American Buffalo.” This has personal meaning for Luger as an interdisciplinary artist and descendant of buffalo people – offering a poignant reminder of the interconnectedness with nature.
The location on Manhattan Island has further meaning. In 1907, the American Bison Society shipped 15 bison from the Bronx Zoo to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and Game Preserve in Oklahoma to repopulate the species after it had been wiped out in the American West. It was the first animal reintroduction in North America. Now it is in the path to City Hall where animal protection laws are made – and broken.
“The steel material and ash black color of the sculpture reference how in the 1800s millions of bison bones scattered across the Great Plains were collected and incinerated to create calcium bicarbonate, an important component to steel production in the United States. The steel industry propelled U.S. domination of global markets and technological growth during railroad construction and rapid industrialization. The historic images of this era document towering pyramids of bison skulls; these were testaments to settler force and monuments of conquest. They communicated a warning to Native Americans, asserting a haunting commitment to our destruction – and yet, we have survived,” said Luger.
“Attrition” will be on display through November 17. Luger’s work is also currently on view at the 2024 Whitney Biennial.
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