Sketchy Landscape; verso: Two Sketches of Men with Rowboats 1864

Editor: This is Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Sketchy Landscape," a pencil drawing of modest scale housed at the Harvard Art Museums. It feels so ephemeral, just barely there. What do you see in this seemingly simple sketch? Curator: It invites us to consider the land itself as a site of ongoing negotiation and representation. How does Gifford's fleeting rendering of the landscape intersect with the historical dispossession of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands? Editor: That’s a perspective I hadn’t considered. Curator: It's a reminder that even seemingly innocent depictions of nature are never truly neutral. Editor: It gives me a lot to consider. Curator: Indeed, art encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths.