Curator, Nancy K. Burns discusses the grounding piece for New Terrain.

The dialogue about 21st Century art continues in Worcester. With the unveiling of contemporary portraits in two of the oldest institutions in Worcester in the past few weeks, leaders in the cultural community like the American Antiquarian Society and our collaborative partner, Mechanics Hall are making waves. Now, Worcester Art Museum’s Nancy Kathryn Burns’ curatorial splash into spring is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Yesterday we attended the media preview for New Terrain: 21st-Century Landscape Photography, opening this Saturday, April 6, 2024, from 7-9 pm.

With keen foresight, the exhibition was developed by Nancy Kathryn Burns, Stoddard Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs exploring technology, identity, political activism, and history through concepts of the landscape. This is a MUST SEE show, of 30 engaging and riveting artworks that are all about process and deep narratives. This work was made within the last 20 years.

Of note, works range from the most analog photographs made without light to AI, 3D printing and Nancy has included the work of a few local artists, including Matt Gamber and Ileana Doble Hernandez, a Mexican woman who left a violent and chaotic place and immigrated to Framingham, Massachusetts, but still faces the ravages of American gun violence. Eight artists of New Terrain will be in attendance at the opening. As curator, Nancy recognizes gaps and needs to be filled in the canon of the museum’s collection that she watches over. She said that every choice was purposeful. New Terrain indicates that her foresight will earn some due attention and respect, as it always does.

Nine new acquisitions were made from this exhibition, including BIPOC and female artists. This list includes American artist Dread Scott, whom you may know from his American flag work back in 1989; Jamaican-born artist Paul Anthony Smith, Dawoud Bey, whose work An American Project was co-organized by the Whitney Museum and SFMOMA; Choctaw / Chitimacha artist, from Sacramento, California, Sarah Sense is also included in this group of nine.

A monumental print in the center or the room, steals the show with impact and concept by Canadian artist Stan Douglas, called Bumtown, an “animation frame” not a photograph, a digital chromogenic print of a place that "used to exist pieced together with the help of AI, a custom app, and ultra-focused patience, taking two years to complete. The slight color variations lead the viewer into the immersive perimeter and the monstrous obelisk it is mounted to have lines that parallel the image, increasing the distortion that has to be experienced. Our favorites included Cyano-Collage by Wu Chi-Tsung, The Clouds by Yang Yongliang and Eastman Kodak Velox, Expired 1926, Processed 2014 by Alison Rossiter. Read all the tags with the patience the artists had creating all of this beautiful work. This exhibition is so deep and cerebral. We are fortunate that Nancy K. Burns is a leader in our creative community here in Worcester.

Nancy’s shows are always epic and she is a true gift to the art-loving community of New England.

“This exhibition offers us a chance to ask how the idea of landscape can be taken in unexpected directions by the use of different processes and materials,” Burns said. “This idea is especially relevant to bring to New England, which has a long-standing artistic tradition that often interprets the landscape as a direct representation of the external world; I’m excited to see that tradition turned on its head.” —Nancy Kathryn Burns

New Terrain, is hands-down a MUST SEE, clear your calendar to be taken back. This one is a slow-burn, monumental message about how contemporary photography, landscape, identity, climate change, political art and history are embracing innovation as part of the process and shifting convention and making indelible traces on our collective landscape.

Dread Scott at Basel Miami, 2022, Image: Payal Thiffault

Why are we so fired up?

New Terrain is innovative and really makes you think about what our art is saying as a collective 21st Century community of artists around the world. New Terrain includes art using so many forms of technology. The body of work was made from the year 2000 to the present moment. Experiencing the show felt especially exciting as Juniper Rag is exploring some of the same concepts in our series of calls for 2023/24—

Unbound, Pulp and now with our current call for art, Vanguard, juried by Tam Gryn of Miami. Learn more about Vanguard.

The timing is fortuitous, as we discuss technology in our processes, concepts in risk-taking and pushing boundaries of contemporary art at Juniper Rag. The exhibition examines how contemporary artists who use photography are exploring landscapes in incredibly creative ways. Nancy said to the point, “This is a process show.” Stressing how much she loves when artist’s have very complex processes with layers of conceptual purpose and laborious steps to create their work, each piece in this unique show has a reason for being included. Nancy has a keen sense of what is important in a collection, so her vision and intent combined with her wild animations and excitement just pushed us over the edge. As a curator of works on paper, she was quick to point out that "we no longer look at photography on paper, but on a screen.” And, there you go. We are all using technology to further our creative dialogues.

If you can attend any events included in the schedule, go.