UCROSS: A Portrait in Place

UCROSS: A Portrait in Place is the result of a collaboration between a group of ecologists from the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and artists associated with Land Arts of the American West at the University of New Mexico. In the summers of 2013 and 2014, the group convened at Ucross, a foundation and residency program situated on a 20,000-acre working ranch in Wyoming, to create works on-site.

Lannan has been a lead funder of UNM’s Land Arts of the American West program since its inception in 2000. Under the program’s founder, Bill Gilbert, distinguished professor emeritus of art and ecology, LAAW has  flourished as an interdisciplinary model for an arts pedagogy based in place. Conceived as a mobile arts studio, the program immerses students in the landscape of the Southwest, challenging them to make new work in situ that is responsive to both aesthetic and environmental cues.

Lannan’s presentation of UCROSS: A Portrait in Place is in part a celebration of this long-standing partnership and in part recognition of Professor Gilbert’s contributions as he retires from his post, passing the reins to Subhankar Banerjee, another outstanding leader in the field of art and ecology with whom Lannan has a long history.