Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman
On view March 12, 2022–February 5, 2023
SALEM, MA – The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents an exhibition of two artists, award-winning nature photographer Stephen Gorman and beloved New Yorker artist Edward Koren, and their response to our urgent planetary crisis. Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman is part of PEM’s Climate + Environment initiative and is on view March 12, 2022 through February 5, 2023.
“Working independently but with uncanny synergy, Gorman and Koren consider the consequences of a destabilized natural environment and raise the alarm about our advancing climate crisis,” said Jane Winchell, exhibition co-curator and PEM’s Sarah Fraser Robbins Director of the Art & Nature Center and curator of Natural History. “This is the first time that Gorman’s wildlife and landscape photographs and Koren’s drawings, lithographs and etchings have been exhibited together. We hope that visitors will find that these artists’ distinct but mutually reinforcing visions spark new ways of reflecting and responding to the biggest environmental challenges of our time.”
Edward Koren is among The New Yorker magazine’s most published cartoonists and has been described as a dramatist of the Anthropocene. Recent work shows how Koren’s well-known cast of characters are transformed and reduced to an elemental state by the climate. Hair has given way to bones! While artists have long turned to depictions of skeletons to symbolize our own mortality, Koren’s skeletal creatures are inspired by our environmental crisis. Springing from the artist’s fertile imagination as he works in his home studio, the beings appear in landscapes littered with the fragments of civilization. With bewildered expressions, these darkly comic figures seem hapless to alter their fate, but share a profound realization of what is unraveling at their feet.
Stephen Gorman’s work uses photography to help show how the climate crisis is impacting our planet as well as our humanity in visceral and deeply personal ways. Concerned with how a culture of conquest, exploitation and individual gain leads to environmental destruction, Gorman traveled to Kaktovik, Alaska – an Inupiat village in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to document polar bears who have become climate refugees and face extinction as the arctic sea ice retreats and they are left to scavenge whale carcasses along the shore. His resulting images, many of which have never been exhibited before, invite you to hold the gaze of the bears as they stare out of the picture, affirming our common bond, connection, and interwoven fate. As Gormans says, “the loaded, emotional exchange of this moment with the bears communicates our dire situation in ways climate facts simply cannot.”
“Down to the Bone creates a dialogue between two dramatically different and, at first glance, seemingly unrelated artists,” said Trevor Smith, PEM’s Associate Director–Multisensory Experience and Curator of the Present Tense and exhibition co-curator. “Both artists are intensely interested in how the gaze of their subject suggests their awareness of the viewer – Gorman’s polar bears and Koren’s bushy-haired skeletons look us square in the eye. By exhibiting them together, a surprising and dynamic juxtaposition emerges between the works and a provocative tension shines through.”
The two artists live less than an hour from one another in Vermont and serendipitously discovered that their work, though executed with different mediums, asks the same questions and shares a similar message. The artists believe the root of environmental crisis is cultural. We can empower ourselves by creating and reviving narratives that promote living within moral, ethical and natural constraints.
Environmentalist, journalist and author Bill McKibben describes the impact of experiencing Koren and Gorman’s works together: "These remarkable images need to be seen, and widely. We risk trading the splendor of our world for bones and ash. And nothing I've ever seen has ever made that clearer."
The Down to the Bone gallery experience includes a video of the artists discussing their work and their individual approaches to the creative process, providing a window into how artists of various backgrounds are addressing climate change. The gallery also includes a picture book by Gorman, featuring the life of polar bears in the Arctic, and concludes with a response station where visitors can answer one of three questions inspired by Zita Cobb, an entrepreneurial advocate for sustainability.
ABOUT EDWARD KOREN
Visual artist and satirist Edward Koren (b. 1935, United States) is among the great New Yorker cartoonists whose images have defined that magazine over the last half-century. Composed with a flickering line, his shaggy characters—at once human and animal—are instantly recognizable. The most recent of his seven collections of New Yorker cartoons is Koren. In the Wild, 2018. He has written and illustrated children’s books, Behind the Wheel, and Very Hairy Harry. Koren is an inveterate collaborator, illustrating projects such as How to Eat Like a Child by Delia Ephron, A Dog’s Life by Peter Mayle, and The New Legal Seafoods Cookbook by Roger Berkowitz and Jane Doerfer. Prior to his Thinking About Extinction series (2015-present), environmental themes have surfaced periodically in Koren’s work all the way back to the 1970s.
ABOUT STEPHEN GORMAN
Stephen Gorman (b. 1959, United States) is an internationally recognized photographer and best-selling book author. His work focuses on how cultural values and national mythologies shape our relationships to the world we live in and the diverse societies with which we share it. Gorman is the author and photographer of several books including The American Wilderness: Journeys into Distant and Historic Landscapes, and Northeastern Wilds: Journeys of Discovery in the Northern Forest. Arctic Visions: Encounters at the Top of the World was commissioned by the Inuit of Nunavik and won the Benjamin Franklin award in 2011, one of the highest national honors for independent publishers. Throughout his career, Gorman has worked on cultural and environmental assignments for leading periodicals such as National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and Sierra.
PUBLICITY IMAGES
High-resolution images are available upon request.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Share your impressions with us on social media using #PEMclimate #PEMDowntotheBone
IMAGE CREDITS
- Stephen Gorman, Lamentation (detail) 2017. Pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
- Edward Koren, Goodbye, my friends, 2018. Graphite on paper. Courtesy of the Artist ©Edward Koren.
- Edward Koren, ©Edward Koren
- Stephen Gorman, © Stephen Gorman.
PROGRAMMING
Opening Day Event
Down to the Bone: Conversation with the Artists
Saturday, March 12 | 1–2 pm
Included with admission
Space is limited due to capacity restrictions for health and safety
Award-winning nature photographer Stephen Gorman and beloved New Yorker artist Edward Koren join in conversation with exhibition curators Trevor Smith and Jane Winchell to celebrate the opening of their special exhibition Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman. Together, the artists will reflect on how their very different — but mutually reinforcing — visions merged to create this exhibition which underscores the consequences of destabilizing our natural environment.
Create Night with New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren
Thursday, March 17, 2022 from 7-8 pm
Members $10; nonmembers $20
Advance registration required. Check pem.org for details.
Grab a drink, invite a friend and join New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren in this virtual art class as he guides participants through mastering the art of the doodle. The artist’s work is featured in Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman, opening March 12 at PEM. Participants will receive a kit in advance with tools necessary to complete the project.
SPONSORS
Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman is presented as part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative and is made possible by the generosity of Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Creighton family, Susan and Appy Chandler, Peter and Sandra Lawrence and individuals who support the Exhibition Incubation Fund: Jennifer and Andrew Borggaard, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Kate and Ford O'Neil, and Henry and Callie Brauer. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
ABOUT PEM’S CLIMATE + ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE
Down to the Bone is part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative. This ongoing series of special exhibitions, installations and programs about our changing relationship with the more-than-human world is designed to encourage reflection, inspire conversation and spark action. Learn more at pem.org/climate-environment and #PEMClimate.
PROTECTING HEALTH AND SAFELY
The health and safety of PEM’s staff and visitors is our highest priority. PEM has increased its safety protocols, including the frequency and intensity of its sanitation and disinfection efforts across the museum. Masks are encouraged for all visitors. To learn more, visit pem.org/safety.
ABOUT THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM
Over the last 20 years, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) has distinguished itself as one of the fastest-growing art museums in North America. Founded in 1799, it is also the country’s oldest continuously operating museum. At its heart is a mission to enrich and transform people's lives by broadening their perspectives, attitudes and knowledge of themselves and the wider world. PEM celebrates outstanding artistic and cultural creativity through exhibitions, programming and special events that emphasize cross-cultural connections, integrate past and present and underscore the vital importance of creative expression. The museum's collection is among the finest of its kind boasting superlative works from around the globe and across time -- including American art and architecture, Asian export art, photography, maritime art and history, Native American, Oceanic, and African art, as well as one of the nation’s most important museum-based collections of rare books and manuscripts. PEM's campus offers a varied and unique visitor experience with hands-on creativity zones, interactive opportunities and performance spaces. Twenty-two noted historic structures grace PEM’s campus, including Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year-old Chinese house that is the only example of Chinese domestic architecture on display in the United States. HOURS: Open Thursdays, Saturdays & Sundays, 10 am–5 pm, and Fridays 10 am–7 pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. ADMISSION: Adults $20; seniors $18; students $12. Members, youth 16 and under and residents of Salem enjoy free general admission. INFO: Call 866-745-1876 or visit pem.org
Media Contacts
Whitney Van Dyke | Director of Communications | whitney_vandyke@pem.org | 978-542-1828
Amelia Kantrovitz | Exhibition Publicist | amelia_kantrovitz@pem.org | 617-794-4964