ABOVE IMAGE: Superflux, Refuge for Resurgence, 2021. Installation view of the Our Time on Earth exhibition at the Barbican Centre. © Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images.
You could say that PEM’s latest exhibition is about creative problem solving...and also belonging, imagining and engaging. All four came into play when staff members from PEM and London’s Barbican Centre worked together to install the U.S. debut of Our Time on Earth and a small – but key – detail needed tending to from the traveling exhibition. The installation Refuge for Resurgence imagines multiple species, including a beaver, a snake, a human being and a wolf, gathering for a post-apocalyptic dinner party. When a tuft of wolf fur became irretrievably stuck deep inside a crevice in one of the installation’s wooden stools, the PEM Preparation team came up with a creative solution: enlisting the help of a wolf sanctuary in nearby Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Wolf Hollow, a nonprofit formally known as the North American Wolf Foundation, aims to protect wolves in the wild through education and live animal programs. The sanctuary responded quickly with an offer of fur from the resident animals’ undercoat, which is regularly and painlessly picked up during shedding season. Operations Manager Kevin Kenny asked how much fur the exhibition would need and soon settled on a handful from a wolf named Linnea. Despite their already long hours and weekends of work, the exhibition installation team made a Friday field trip to pick up the fur before freezing it for two days to make it suitable to bring inside the museum. For these hard-working museum professionals, the fresh air and access to nature fit right in with an exhibition that examines the natural world and offers new, hopeful perspectives on the climate crisis.
“It’s been a long time since there were any wolves in England,” said Taz Lovejoy, who is responsible for setting up Refuge for Resurgence, a delicate, organic installation that was part of the 2021 Venice Biennale.
Linnea, a 13-year-old wolf who contributed to the exhibition. Courtesy of Wolf Hollow.
Though she’s done this three times – at the Barbican, the Musée de la civilisation in Québec City and now PEM – sourcing wolf fur has been a brand new experience. “If we had gone to another venue on a different continent, we might not have had this opportunity,” she said.
The Barbican hopes that after the premiere of Our Time on Earth in Salem, the immersive exhibition might travel to more venues around North America. Sustainability and a reduced carbon footprint are not only subjects of this exhibition — they’re also built into its touring schedule.
“We try not to air freight anything,” said Chloe Wood, Exhibitions Manager from the Barbican. The exhibition traveled by sea to Canada and then by truck from Québec City to Salem.
Though she’s been working on this exhibition for years (and edited the award-winning catalogue that uses nontoxic inks and recycled paper), Wood says she still finds inspiration in Our Time on Earth. “I think it does show art and creativity are a way out of these ruts…I do find it inspiring. It’s good to work on a show you are invested in so personally.”
Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen, Eyes as Big as Plates, #Sinikka (Norway 2019). © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen.
All of us, everywhere on the planet, are personally invested. Fashion, technology, architecture and design all play a role, asking the question: What if sustainability was always at the forefront of our minds?
Chloe Wood, Exhibition Manager for the Barbican. Photo by Dinah Cardin/PEM.
Several days before their wolf sanctuary outing, the joint exhibition crews were getting along beautifully, swapping ideas and tools of the trade, even though they don’t always call them the same thing. Pallet jack for the Americans, versus pallet truck for the Brits. Dollies versus skates, carts versus trolleys. There had even been attempts on the American side to convert to metric. “We’ve adopted the term ‘faffing around,’” said Karen Ceballos, PEM’s Associate Director of Exhibition Design, expressing her delight over a phrase a British grandmother might use to tell you to stop wasting time. “Like, ‘quit faffing around.’”
But a little faffing around can be good for morale. Other breaks from the exhibition installation included a group hike in Lynn Woods for the Barbican team and a jaunt along the bike path to nearby Marblehead. They also discovered, with the help of the PEM team, Salem’s cheese shop. “The most amazing cheese toastie,” gushed Yulia Rowan, while taking a quick break from her work. “It’s been really lovely working here. The team’s been really nice.”
An outing in downtown Salem with the Bewitched statue. Photo by Elena Incardona/PEM.
The museum professionals on their outing to Wolf Hollow. Photo by Whitney Van Dyke/PEM.
As IT and A/V teams programmed digital installations and other staff members used hand tools to set up casing, Wood showed off a piece called Planet City, in which designer Liam Young asks us to imagine radically reversing planetary sprawl by creating one hyper-dense metropolis housing the Earth’s entire population.
Holition and George Monbiot, The World Beneath Our Feet, 2022. Installation view of the Our Time on Earth exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, 2023. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
Tall, haunting mannequins are dressed as characters from a nearby video, which depicts a future where all of humankind lives in one city, letting the rest of the planet re-wild. Druid-like figures include a drone herder, acting as shepherd of the future, alongside a waste weaver and a character with a bison head that flashes across the screen.
Liam Young (costumes produced by Ane Crabtree), Planet City, 2021. Installation view of the Our Time on Earth exhibition at the Barbican Centre, 2022. © Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images.
We moved onto another digital piece, Queer Ecology, by Colombian biologist Brigitte Baptiste and the Institute of Digital Fashion. This work is a shared collective experience that prompts reflection on what lessons humanity can glean from nature's inherent gender fluidity. In other words, nothing is more queer than nature. Wood waved her arms to test the piece that Phil, a freelancer with the Barbican, had just been setting up.
“This was a challenge. We don’t usually do big tech shows,” said Ceballos, adding that this exhibition tested the museum’s grid and required anything electrical to be converted from U.K. to U.S. standard voltage. “I could not be happier with how things are going,” she said, looking around at the bustle of the two crews working happily together.
One of the installations addresses the deforestation, pollution and other negative environmental impacts of the fashion industry. The future of fashion can be mushroom-derived mycelium leather jackets and t-shirts made from hemp, making affordable and sustainable pieces a reality.
As the team prepared this installation, PEM’s Exhibition Preparator Mollie Denhard cleaned the inside of a giant acrylic cube. She explained that, among its many uses in PEM exhibitions, the cube has held a beloved dress from the museum's collection of pieces by the late designer Alexander McQueen.
Mollie Denhard from PEM’s Preparation team cleans a display case. Photo by Dinah Cardin/PEM.
Reuse is at the heart of the exhibition’s structural design. From the recycled object labels to the unvarnished casing, this exhibition uses greener materials wherever possible. In PEM’s gallery, wool drapery is used to separate audio and visual zones. Curtains used for this purpose are usually made of artificial materials, but wool still meets fire codes and often provides better soundproofing, said Ceballos. “The use of wool is a lovely material, good for a gallery with so much going on acoustically. The wool does the work for you.”
As we tour around, my eye is instantly drawn to the look of the light wood throughout the exhibition, with its organic, natural finish. “It’s nice to see an exhibition where not everything is so honed or polished,” said Ceballos. “That’s more money, resources and time. You can have cut plywood with a light polypropylene and still get a beautiful look to it. It doesn’t need a coat of lacquer to be beautiful.”
While PEM makes a conscious effort to reuse casing, furniture, walls and other structures behind each exhibition as part of its Climate + Environment initiative, there are challenges here, the same ones at museums across the planet, said Ceballos. “Sustainability is fairly easy to achieve from a building standpoint. We have the challenge of storing it in between uses,” she says.
The exhibition can be found in multiple spaces throughout the museum. Other featured works include Wither, a slice of digital Amazon rainforest that disappears in front of your eyes at the rate of current deforestation, and the calmer Sonic Waterfall, a sound and light installation that uses targeted sonic frequencies to create a deep state of restoration, focus and reflection.
Even for those who don’t know the story behind its wolf fur elements, Refuge for Resurgence is another standout work. Award-winning design collective Superflux created a long, elegant table surrounded by natural birch walls. “I absolutely love the piece,” said Taz Lovejoy. “Every time I set it up, I’m daunted by how the organic materials might have changed.” From learning the curves of the oak table to how the timber stools can morph and change with time, “I get to play a bit to bring new life,” she said. “I’m almost learning floristry to make the dried flowers sit right. I’m learning to love it the more I do it.”
Cultivating love for these creative works seems to be a unifying theme for both teams. The messages of care for the environment and hope for the future are easy to absorb, said Ceballos, but “the sheer beauty of the pieces is what brings you in.”
Our Time on Earth runs through June 9, 2024 and is presented as a part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative. Many of the labels in the exhibition include QR codes that link to additional content, including a digital Exhibition Guide that includes artist and contributor statements for each work. The exhibition’s Be the Change zone will host activation events on March 2, March 30, April 27, May 4, May 11 and June 1. Visitors can ask experts their questions and explore local and regional efforts to address climate change. If you’re inspired by the exhibition, you can also leave a response on the visitor contributions wall, make a climate action pledge at the Count Us In station or submit an image of hope to the live social feed with the hashtag #OurTimeonEarth. Find more information at pem.org/otoe.
Our Time on Earth is produced and curated by the Barbican with guest curators FranklinTill and co-produced by Musée de la civilisation, Québec City, Canada. This exhibition is made possible by Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. We thank James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Chip and Susan Robie, and Timothy T. Hilton as supporters of the Exhibition Innovation Fund. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
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