Curator’s Welcome
Linda Weintraub
The sun rising in the East announces a new day. It is a sign of hope and renewal. The sun setting in the West signals day’s end. It serves as a symbol of dejection and death.
The English explorer and navigator Henry Hudson (1565-1611) headed west when he raised his anchor in a port in Holland on April 4, 1609 in search of a passage to Japan and China by way of the North Pole. The facts of his journey confirm the symbolic gloom associated with the westward direction.
With Dutch backing, he led a scruffy crew aboard a ramshackle boat named the Half Moon on what would prove to be the third of four failed missions to find a sea route to the East. When the conditions became deplor- able in the cold waters off Norway, Hudson decided to change course and head for the New World, reaching the mouth of the Hudson River on September 3, 1609. Upon returning to Europe, Hudson was arrested and forbidden by King James I of England to keep “voyaging to the detriment of his country.”
Demoralized and unemployable, Hudson might have settled into retirement, but his biography includes a far more harrowing and humiliating final chapter. On his fourth attempt to reach the East, Hudson’s ship became frozen in the ice of the Canadian Arctic. Hudson was undaunted by the scarcity of food and the hostility of native populations. His crew, however, did not share his determination to continue the journey.
They mutinied in Hudson Bay, setting their captain, his 14–year–old son and eight loyal crew mates adrift. Hudson was never heard of again and there is no record of how long he and the others survived. We can easily imagine them floating westward, over the horizon and into the setting sun, to meet their deaths.
While triumph and accomplishment are absent from his biography, Hudson is honored for contributing to the dawning of a new era. His name appears on highways, schools, bridges, parks, a yellow rose and, yes, the magnificent Hudson River because it evokes such noble qualities as confidence, courage, and determination.
It seems significant that the date selected to commemorate Henry Hudson’s life is neither his birth nor his death, the commemorative markers of most heroes. Hudson’s life is celebrated on the September day when a hot sun shone down on him and his crew as they rode the flood tide and passed a narrow, wooded island identified as Mannahata in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on the Half Moon. Manhattan means “island of many hills” in the native Lenape language.
Hudson may have returned to Europe from his first three voyages with beaver and corn instead of silk and spices, but his vivid descriptions of the abundant wildlife in the New World enthralled his Old World listeners. The Hudson River and its embankments loomed as fertile territory for their Utopian aspirations. The magnitude of his exploration is responsible for the very fabric of our lives to this day.
“AHOY! Where Lies Henry Hudson?” honors the Quadricentennial of Hudson’s voyage by inviting 16 regional architects to imagine that Hudson’s bones just washed ashore, allowing him to be laid to rest at last. Working singly andin pairs, they designed and constructed memorials that comment on Hudson’s historic journey by reviewing the past 400 years. Their installations range from poignant expressions of Hudson’s misfortunes to exuberant celebrations of his valor. They contrast the failures that comprise Hudson’s real life narrative with the esteemed qualities he has come to embody. The public is invited to explore these diverse interpretations of our common history.
The installations
“AHOY! Where Lies Henry Hudson?” provides one more opportunity for Henry Hudson to inspire creative imaginations.
Byron Bell and Lester Walker materialize the imagined contents of Hudson’s mind as he ventured into uncharted waters; their folk art installation presents a mental universe teeming with monsters, ghouls, and gods.
Matthew Bialecki comments on how this continent is still being transformed by those who were newly arrived in the 1600s. They affected conditions and life forms whose ancestors dwelled in these lands for millennia: humans, plants, animals, soils, waters, and atmosphere.
Matt Bua directs our focus away from the practical advantages and disadvantages of exploration to dwell upon the discrepancy between Hudson’s heroic reputation and his less than heroic life. He memorialized the perils of 17th century travel and the drama of the sinking of Hudson’s vessel in which he, his son and eight others had been cast off by the mutineers.
John Cetra and Nancy Rudd imagine how the world might have been different if Hudson succeeded in finding that route over the North Pole. At a time when satellite imaging of the North Pole ice cap shows that the ice is receding, their work envisions the open waterway that might emerge in another 400 years due to global warming.
Solange Fabião’s passageway invites visitors to experience the sensorial, kinesthetic, and emotional aspects of a journey into the unknown.
Randy Gerner envisions a river that has historically provided navigation, waters teeming with fish, opportunity for commerce, but a dead-end for providing a westward route to Asia.
Nicholas Goldsmith and Gisela Stromeyer dramatize the ironic relationship between Hudson’s error and his historic discovery, seeing in this discrepancy a pattern for creativity that is also true among many artists.
Michael McDonough and Andrew Neal‘s Quadricentennial memorial celebrates the spirit of exploration that is epitomized by Henry Hudson, a legacy that continues to this day in the Hudson Valley.
Barry Price utilizes vernacular Dutch architecture to create a 'decentralized' monument that demonstrates the expansive nature of Hudson’s achievement. Architecture is just one example of the many forms of change introduced to this continent by successive waves of settlers. The list includes new social structures and manufacturing protocols, new forms of governance, and new religions.
Todd Rader and Amy Crews invite visitors to become modern pilgrims by embarking on their own search for the northern passage. They constructed a series of shrines that evoke the remote locations visited by Hudson and his crew, many of which bear his name to this day.
Evan Stoller commemorates Henry Hudson, the explorer, by imagining what Hudson’s ship would look like if he were exploring today.
Why architects?
By choosing architects, I hoped to offer the audience of “AHOY!” multi–dimensional insights and pleasure that exceed the typical experience provided by art. Indeed, there is not a single installation in which the audience is merely the observer of a static art object. Instead, visitors actively navigate passageways, enclosures, hulls, drums, kiosks, and other structures that enable people to explore and congregate. The audience is invited to touch, observe, and walk through, around, and over the installations. In this way, the constructions in this exhibition integrate the twin sensibilities of time and space that are core to architectural practice. They offer the pleasure of moving in space, through time. Architects were also chosen because they have long been absent from area programming. “AHOY! Where Lies Henry Hudson?” highlights the contributions of architects to the cultural vitality of the Hudson Valley. In this exhibit, they are recognized alongside the area’s celebrated poets, musicians, dancers, sculptors, painters, playwrights, and actors.
Furthermore, by releasing architects from the constraints imposed by building codes, zoning ordinances, client specifications, and engineering protocols, “AHOY!” provides a rare opportunity for the architects to display the fullness of their creative imaginations. In addition to design, architecture also expresses cultural values. In essence, the “AHOY!” architects engaged in a dialogue initiated by Hudson, the explorer. This dialogue transpires between natives who are discovered and newcomers who settle in their territory. In biology, the term “introduced species”’ refers to plants and animals. These newcomers inevitably alter native conditions. When they are harmful, they are called “invasive”. When they are beneficial, they contribute to “diversity”. The Quadricentennial reminds us that most people on this content were “introduced” because Henry Hudson and other explorers forged connections with the New World.
Acknowledgements
It is a tribute to the generosity, creativity and enthusiasm of the architects that each one participated on a voluntary basis, without any compensation and assuming all of the costs. Instead of spending clients’ funds and earning a fee, they spent their own funds and earned no fee. Their reward, apart from the works’ impact on the public, is their palpable sense of liberation as they shifted away from conventional ways of working and adopted unconventional materials, techniques, scales, designs, and programs. The exhilaration that accompanies experimentation is evident in their memorials and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild would, most of all, like to thank the architects: Tobias Armborst, Byron Bell, Matthew Bialecki, Matt Bua, John Cetra, Amy Crews, Solange Fabião, Randy Gerner, Nicholas Goldsmith, Michael McDonough, Barry Price, Todd Rader, Nancy Ruddy, Gisela Stromeyer, Evan Stoller, Lester Walker. “island of many hills” in the native Lenape language. Contributing architectural associates were: Andrew Neal, Margaret Innerhofer, John Vett, Charles Warren, Rhys Bambrick, Daniel D’Oca, Georgeen Theodore, Ingnatius Burke, Jody Buckles, Lorraine Gimblett, Pierpaolo Martiradonna, Madeleine Cichy, Russell Krysiak, Ilene Mark, and Brian Walker.
Team spirit guided this project from its inception. I would like to express my appreciation to the innumerable individuals who contributed to the exhibition’s concept, evolution, and realization:
Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild: Chairperson, Frances Halsband; Executive Director, Carla Smith; Coordinator and Architectural Facilitator, Alan Baer; web designer, Laura Pepitone.
Hosts: G. Daniel Perry and Abigail Sturges.
Signage and map: Alan Baer.
Area Historians: Anne Gordon, Port Ewen Town Historian; David Baker, former Hurley.
Town Historians; Deana Decker, Hurley; Ed Ford, City of Kingston; Alfred Marks, New Paltz; Ruth-Anne Muller, Olive; Richard Heppner, Woodstock.
Logo designer: Byron Bell.
Programming participants: Mikhail Horowitz, Giles Malkine, Bob Lusk, Rich Bala, Spatter the Mud with Ian Warpole, Julie Parisi Kirby, and T.G. Vanini, Cate Olson, Douglas Wooley, and Joshuah Patriarco, Lou Trapani, Rhinebeck Center for Performing Arts, Pitchfork Militia, Peter Head, Karl and Lisa Karuse and their children Ian and Finn, Joe and Laurel Morgan and their son Keirin, Ed Sanders, Evan Pritchard, Frances Halsband, Peter Wheelwright,Danielle Woerner, Rich Flanders, Arm–of–the–Sea Theater, Jonathan Kruk, and others.
Cooperative programming: Center of Photography at Woodstock Executive Director Ariel Shanberg and Education Coordinator Liz Unterman. Studio-X, Columbia University Director, Gavin Browning.
Woodstock Day School Head of School, James Handlin; Art instructor, Inyo Harbonneau. Ulster BOCES and its Coordinator of Talent Development and the Arts Katy Colletti.
Ulster Publishing: Publisher Geddy Sveikauskas, Special Sections Editor Andrea Barrist Stern, and Production Manager and designer Joe Morgan. Consultants: Paul Swift, Jayne Merkel, Mikhail Horowitz, Alan Newmann, Benjamin Prosky.
Bio
Linda Weintraub has originated 50 exhibitions and published over 20 catalogues. Most recently, she curated “Thirty–Below: Project Eco–Runway” in Madison, Wisconsin in early 2009 and “Eco. Demo. M.O.”at Nurture Art in Brooklyn in 2008. From 1982–1993, Weintraub served as the first Director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute on the Bard College campus. Prior to her appointment at Bard, she was the Director of the Philip Johnson Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College. She served as Henry R. Luce Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College from 2000-2003. Weintraub holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University and is the founder of Artnow Publications. She is the author of Avant–Guardians: Texlets in Ecology and Art (Artnow Publications, 2006, 2007, 2007), In The Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Artists (Thames and Hudson and Distributed Art Publications, 2003), and Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art’s Meaning in Contemporary Society (Art Insight, 1996 with subsequent editions).
