About the Exhibit
The Western landscape is a place where the transformation of physical space involves both visualization and manipulation, where the connections between what can be physically seen and how it is visually represented are not always clear; technologies originally designed to render places visible often became instruments of invisibility and surveillance, severing western lands from the populations that depend on them. Out of Site focuses on three technological revolutions to examine how visual technologies, artistic interventions, and the workings of state power have evolved in tandem with the Western landscape: wet-plate photography, used to theorize geological processes; the rise of aerial photography and pattern recognition; and the increasing use of drones, satellites, and other long-range photographic technologies to image secretive sites, military installations, and other technologically-mediated locales. The exhibition features 90 artworks, archival materials, and devices ranging from mammoth plate cameras to drones. Carleton Watkins’ Nevada mining photographs, 19th-century geological reports, and stereoviews, and Margaret Bourke-White’s aerial surveys published in LIFE magazine in 1936 are juxtaposed with contemporary photographic and video pieces by David Maisel, Michael Light, and Steven Yazzie, among other artists.
Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West is on exhibit at The Autry Museum of the American West’s George Montgomery Gallery from May 18, 2024 – January 5, 2025.
The catalog for this exhibition is available at the museum’s bookstore or online at https://shop.theautry.org/products/10014160
Contributors: William L. Fox, Mark Klett, Hillary Mushkin, Britt Salvesen, Kim Stringfellow, Jason Weems, and Will Wilson
The Autry Museum in Griffith Park
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462
Located northeast of downtown, across from the Los Angeles Zoo.
Map and Directions
Exhibition Sponsors
Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit: pst.art
Out of Site catalog