Billboard, Nevada

Bryan Schutmaat, American, born 1983

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2012

Archival pigment print

1/3

Sheet: 40 × 50 in. (101.6 × 127 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Nancy and Thomas F. O’Neil III, Class of 1979

2014.66.33

Portfolio / Series Title

Grays the Mountain Sends

Geography

Place Made: United States, North America

Period

21st century

Object Name

Photograph

Research Area

Photograph

Not on view

Label

Abandonment echoes around this small Nevada community. One-story buildings dot the desert plain before it rises precipitously into jagged, snow-speckled peaks. With this image, photographer Bryan Schutmaat questions the iconography of the West—towering mountains and the promise of a prosperous new life. Instead, the dilapidated billboard in the foreground, now decorated with an anonymous tombstone, personifies the desertion of rural America. The last remnants of a 1980s anti-drug campaign poster peel off its face: THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS. ANY QUESTIONS??

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Provenance

The artist, New York, New York; sold to Nancy and Thomas O'Neil III, Baltimore, Maryland, July 2, 2013; given to present collection, 2014.

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