'Witness' Collaborative Art Project Opens at Minute Man NH Park

NPS & The Umbrella Team Up to Launch Art-in-Park with Public-Collaboration Installation by Nancy Winship Milliken Studio

As part of its 60th anniversary commemorations, Minute Man National Historical Park, in partnership with The Umbrella Community Arts Center, will present Earth Press Project: Witness, a collaborative public art project.

Inspired by the land and the history that the park commemorates and interprets, this project invites communities across America to respond, with one word, to an online prompt, “What change would you like to witness on this Earth?”

A collaborative effort with Artist-in-Residence Nancy Winship Milliken Studio, a community-generated sculpture made of earthen blocks imprinted with the public’s responses will be on view September 1 - November 1, 2019 outside the Minute Man Visitor Center in Lexington, MA. A declaration of witnessing change, this project invites public engagement and dialogue around current challenges facing our earth.

Earth Press Project: Witness brings the land, history and resources of the Minute Man National Historical Park together with the artists and expertise of The Umbrella, and has co-evolved to include additional regional partners such as Reflex Letterpress (MA), Building Heritage (VT), and Terra Collaborative (VT). As a pilot Artist-in-Residence program, Witness initiates art that engages the community in the Park. Using art to carry stories and bridge the past with the future, these imprinted words intend to "reflect participants' individual and collective hopes for our shared future."

ABOUT ART-IN-THE-PARKS

In the 19th century, Hudson River School painters and early photographers such as Carleton Watkins captured the imagery of the American West and such majestic places such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. Their body of work helped inspire Congress to establish the National Park Service with the Organic Act in August 1916. Today, the environment, history, and resources of our National Parks have inspired more than 50 NPS Artist-in-Residence programs nationwide.

BJ Dunn, Superintendent, Minute Man National Historical Park, has a history of being involved with arts in the parks, previously at the helm of artist programs at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.

“Art in the parks is yet another exciting way to engage new audiences in learning the history of the American Revolution and the events that this park interprets for the public. We are excited to be working with The Umbrella Community Arts Center to pilot this 2019 artist-in-residence project,” says Dunn.

Nancy Lippe, Director of The Umbrella Arts & Environment Program, is excited to invite the community to participate in this installation. “The Witness Project embodies our mission to reconnect people to the land and place via the arts, and I can’t think of anything more important today than to consider our individual and collective roles in shaping our future connection to the earth.” She hopes this pilot collaborative project with the National Park Service will grow into an ongoing Artist-in-Residence partner program.

Nancy Winship Milliken Studio’s work ultimately addresses complex issues involved in sustainable living. Defining her art as “contemporary pastoralism,” Nancy Winship Milliken is inspired by our age-old relationship to nature as a way to consider ecological questions in the present. Using the material of earth and the printed word ties the project to the agrarian and literary history the park is steeped in. The battlefields, structures, and land in the park were witness to the American revolutionary spirit and are key to informing this project’s concept. In addition to printing acting as the lifeblood of engaging the development of the revolution, The Wayside, now a part of the park, witnessed literary heritage develop. The statement, “I like good strong words that mean something,” by The Wayside’s famous inhabitant, Louisa May Alcott, became the starting germ of the idea for the Earth Press Project.

RELATED EVENTS

In addition to exploring the installation at the Park, The Umbrella will be hosting a number of related events throughout the fall, including an artist demo on September 22, a thematically related exhibition in its annual Art Ramble at neighboring Concord's Hapgood Wright Town Forest, and a Witness-themed panel discussion on October 21.

For more information, see TheUmbrellaArts.org/Witness