Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

My paper focuses on one site of reclamation in Seattle, Washington—the Olympic Sculpture Park (2007)—and analyzes the place-making aesthetics of its design, landscape architecture, and modes of display. Framed through an analysis of the installation, Neukom Vivarium (2004–2006), a site-specific sculpture installation by American conceptual artist Mark Dion, I highlight the pedagogical modes of engagement established by visual framing devices and textual elements of identification utilized in the artwork, modes also encountered throughout the sculpture park. Considering how pedagogical aspects represent and allow for experiences with ecologies native to the Seattle region of the Pacific Northwest, I argue that these reclamation aesthetics operate to establish environmentally-attuned conceptions of place while simultaneously veiling the history of cultural violence and environmental degradation at this site. Formerly the location of an important Duwamish village, a flourishing prairie, and shoreline habitat for shellfish, salmon, and waterfowl, six decades of use as an oil storage and distribution port by UNOCAL (1910-1975) left the property’s soil and groundwater completely contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbon products. After community protests, cleanup of the port was initiated by the oil company in 1988 and continued after the purchase of the site by the Seattle Art Museum in 1996. While innovative design by Weiss/Manfredi and landscape architecture by Charles Anderson successfully rehabilitated the shoreline beach and reintroduced native plant species, I interrogate the aesthetics of display that highlight native restoration and indigenous plant knowledge while foreclosing historical narratives indigenous, settler-colonial, and industrial land use.