Partial Adirondack Landscape Possibly 1863

Curator: This is Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Partial Adirondack Landscape", part of his sketchbook now held at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It feels… unfinished. I mean, it's a light, almost ghostly suggestion of a landscape. What purpose did this serve? Curator: These sketches reveal Gifford’s process. They demonstrate how he engaged with the landscape firsthand, recording observations as part of his artistic labor, before translating them into larger, more finished paintings. Editor: Right, so it's less about the end product and more about the interaction, Gifford's embodied experience within the landscape. That makes you consider the indigenous populations displaced from these very landscapes, their labor and perspective erased... Curator: True. These sketches, though small, point to the larger economic and social context of landscape production. Editor: Well, it certainly prompts questions about whose stories get told and whose hands shape our understanding of land. Curator: Absolutely, it is a simple sketch, but it holds complex layers.