Cityscapes: Visualizing the Built Environment ca. 1500-2000

Cornelius Visscher
(Dutch, 1619/29-1662)
after Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Flemish (1525/30-1569)
Landscape with Angler
mid-seventeenth century
Etching
(76.63)

The built environment comprises everything fashioned by human hands in the natural landscape, from houses and skyscraper buildings to parking garages and underground sewer systems. In exploring the visual aspects of our constructed landscapes, artists, as social critics, both ask and answer a fundamental question: how do we relate to the built environment? This exhibition presented diverse responses that transcend time periods and cultural perspectives.

The exhibition consisted of three, four-month installments and includes artworks ranging in date from the fifteenth through the late twentieth century. In these works, artists represent cities and towns from around the world. Whether the images picture bustling metropolises or quiet, rural villages, they invite viewers to focus on the synthetic aspects of landscape and to contemplate humanity’s relationship to built environments. The show includes prints, drawings, and paintings. Artists represented in the second installment include Cornelius Visscher, Lyonel Feininger, and local artist Frank Stack.

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