Sculpting With Water

About the Exhibit

Shattuck Visitor Center Interior. Photo: John Horner

While it appears natural, the Emerald Necklace is a dynamic and evolving work of art in the heart of Boston. Frederick Law Olmsted and his collaborators applied skill and imagination to sculpt waterways and landscapes that would uplift, recenter and secure a growing 19th-century city. Today, artist Fujiko Nakaya continues this legacy. Her climate-responsive fog sculptures throughout the Emerald Necklace are carefully crafted to re-sensitize us to the environment, just like Olmsted’s parks.

Though separated by over a century, Nakaya’s and Olmsted’s ambitious work with water both illuminate the relationships between the natural and artificial. Olmsted was a master of perceiving and highlighting the “genius of place”—a landscape’s many individual elements that together create the unique experience of a site. Likewise, Nakaya’s site-specific fog sculptures vividly manifest landscapes’ and weather’s unseen forces.

To mark our 20th Anniversary, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy presented Fog x FLO: Fujiko Nakaya on the Emerald Necklace. With this exhibit, learn how Fujiko Nakaya’s fog art responds to the landscapes of Frederick Law Olmsted (FLO)—both “sculpting with water” to reconnect us to nature by design. The exhibition unites the two artists’ visions, and gives new dimension to the ideals that inspired the parks—and their conversation—into the 21st century.

Presentation of Sculpting With Water is made possible with generous support from Brooke and John Cook and other donors.

Shattuck Visitor Center

125 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
617-522-2700

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