Protect This Land: Making Change Through Visualization

Printmakers from various communities around the United States were invited to respond to the idea that artists throughout history have helped make change by recording what they see. In a portfolio project organized by Melanie Yazzie, CU Boulder Department of Art and Art History and Head of Printmaking, the resulting works show what is happening to the land and speak for the land. The prints are a permanent gift to the Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences & Map Library by Professor Yazzie.

Bears Ears National Monument area is highlighted in this exhibit, inspired by one of the prints, Reduced to the ‘Bear’ Minimum. This piece urges us to consider competing efforts to determine the fate of those lands. Original works by CU students explore the space and meanings of Bears Ears. Photographs from the late 1900s by Christopher Brown offer a glimpse into the diverse landscapes of the Bears Ears region. Historical maps from the CU Boulder Map Library, Government Information Department, and the private collection of Wesley Brown provide a view of the Four Corners region over the past two centuries.

This exhibition is part of the campus-wide program Documenting Change, which presents how strategies of visualization and observation are shared by artists and scientific disciplines to record, study and communicate climate change. Exhibit curator: Naomi Heiser, Map Library.