Wave Hill exhibit evokes Teddy Roosevelt’s spirit

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As Ken Burns is demonstrating in his documentary series on the Roosevelts, nature conservation became lodged in the hearts of Americans thanks in great measure to the eminent family’s efforts.

But if Theodore Roosevelt came back to life, would he recognize the ways we cherish nature as similar to his own?

The latest exhibit at Wave Hill, where Roosevelt spent two summers of his childhood, raises all kinds of questions about how we preserve, admire and alter the plant and animal kingdoms. While only one installation in the show explicitly features the 26th president, the spirit of Roosevelt seems to fill every room of Reshaping the Scenic Wilds.

The exhibit starts off with a whimsical series of black-and-white photos of dioramas depicting scenes in a natural history museum. One display features rows of mineral specimens under a portentous sign reading “GALLERY OF IMPORTANT AND INTERESTING ROCKS.” In another tableau, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton appears in a state of being assembled, with a diagram of the bones self-consciously laid to the side. Artist Lori Nix seems to be driving home how artificial museums’ attempts to recreate nature can be.

A few paces away, there is a video loop of people at the American Museum of Natural History interacting with a just larger-than-life size statue of Teddy Roosevelt.

One man sits down next to the proud bronze figure and snaps a selfie. Another museumgoer appears to say hi to Roosevelt, dressed in outdoor gear, before striking a pose. A youthful visitor even sits in the strapping Roosevelt’s lap for a few moments.

The peculiar video turns spectators into subjects. While the idea is not exactly groundbreaking, the creator of the installation takes things a step further with a small screen directly opposite the one displaying the museumgoers. The footage in the smaller display focuses on the Roosevelt statue’s impassive face alone, creating the illusion that the former president is looking at the people looking at him. What would Roosevelt have thought if a stranger had up and hopped into his lap in real life?

A series of photos of natural history exhibits under construction also teases out the relationship between museumgoers and the things they look at.

Richard Barnes’ giant Suspended Giraffe depicts a tall but no longer proud specimen dangling from hooks in the roof of an exhibit space. As a museum note puts it, the mirthless mammal and other creatures in the series suggest “the oddness of the instinct to render killed animals lifelike.”

Several other parts of the show push the idea to the point of the surreal. Hugh Hayden’s Pigeon Painting I disturbingly blends real pigeon feathers into a cracked piece of concrete. In another room, a video reel dubs footage of starlings with sarcastic quotes like, “So maybe my ancestors were introduced to North America with human help. Remember that birds have occupied the planet 149,800,000 years before humans.” 

Another short video seems to aspire to a sense of harmony between inanimate collections and living creatures. Dana Levy’s The Wake pans between shots of mounted butterflies. Partway through the piece, we see living Monarchs flutter between drawers of dead lepidopterans. The sequence plays out the action we perform with our imaginations every time we go to a natural history museum, picturing to ourselves how the object of a diorama or exhibit would look, sound and smell in real life.

The video’s glorious final scene, of living butterflies filling a hallway lined with dead specimens, perhaps conveys something of the ecstasy Roosevelt would have felt when exploring Wave Hill and the rest of the country in his day.

Recapturing the Scenic Wilds runs until Sunday, Dec. 7. Wave Hill is open Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission costs up to $8. For details, visit www.wavehill.org/visit.

Wave Hill, Teddy Roosevelt, galleries, Shant Shahrigian

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