BOOK & ARTS: My “Sea of Grass” Tour at Mia

Our relationship with the natural world is a story that confuses and inspires. Art has always been reflective of our deferential wonder, empathetic adoration, tumultuous fear, or even lustful greed for our earth.

Bridging art and literature to reveal a history of environmental anxieties, a tour — inspired by David Hage and Josephine Marcotty’s book Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie — at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in August unearthed patterns in the Mia’s own collection.

Sea of Grass is an ambitious book by two former Star Tribune journalists. It offers a history that imparts a science lesson in ecology, as well as a science lesson that inspires both cynicism and optimism about our future.

Hage and Marcotty wade into the rich legend of the American prairie, which was once a diverse ecosystem teeming with biodiversity. Hundreds of years of farming and the ever-increasing environmental degradation caused by climate change has resulted in grasslands that no longer support an ecologically sound environment — much less a healthy food system and society.

Specifically, the book details the destruction of tallgrass prairie and how technological advancements — which have increased agricultural production — have resulted in steep environmental sacrifices that weigh on local communities.

Sea of Grass does find hope. Efforts by Indigenous tribal nations and small farms to reintroduce native wildlife and implement sustainable, rotational practices are positive reforms and inspiring success stories.

Using Sea of Grass to inspire a guided tour at the Mia expands the book’s premise by asking museum visitors to think deeply about what art can tell us about humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

The Tour

Bronco Buster, Frederic Remington, 1895

A bronze sculpture by Frederic Remington — the iconic, mythologized Bronco Buster — is where our guide started the tour on the third floor. Remington is a famed American artist, and his touch and texture is viscerally reminiscent of the movement of wild winds and western mythology. Contextualizing the narratives of the American west in view of the biological, economic, and cultural history of our country’s grasslands — as told by Hage and Marcotty — Bronco Buster calls to mind a uniquely American conquest over land and people under the looming shadow of colonizing exploitation that eradicated Indigenous nations and the land and wildlife necessary to their survival.

Mississippi at Debuke, Iowa, Alfred Thompson Bricher, 1870

We lingered in front of Mississippi at Debuke, Iowa, an oil painting completed by Alfred Thompson Bricher in 1870. Grayish and expansive, it reflects changing American relationships with waterways and wilderness — the industrialization that revolutionized our country and reflects the same conquest of nature that contextualizes Bronco Buster.

Carpet, Vanessa Bell, 1918

A rug created by pioneering interior designer and painter Vanessa Bell is an example of the functionality possible in fine art, the Mia guide explained. With a richly textured and vibrant piece underfoot, the colors envision a diversified use of land. Relax your eyes, and it’s an abstracted agricultural landscape that anyone flying over Minnesota knows well. However, the sprawling fields of corn-yellow and earthy brown are enhanced with streams of blue, green, and pink, inspiring what could be a new world of sustainable farming.

Vessel, Mississippian artist, 1300-1600

The tour wrapped up its grand, sweeping survey of humanity’s relationship to the environment, visitors at the beginning of North American civilization: Cahokia, an early Native American city — and the largest in North America. Chaokia was situated where Saint Louis, Missouri, is today, where Mississippian people flourished from roughly 1000 AD until the 1300s. The society disappeared mysteriously, and little is known about why the population died off; the number roughly equalled London at the time. Climate change from a mini–ice age or disastrous disease are possible answers. All that remains today are relics, such as a delicate vase at the Mia.

Citrine Blast gets the last word. The print of gently dynamic orange and purple patterns is on view until October 4 as part of a special exhibition at the Mia, “The Abstract Worlds of Yoshida Hodaka and Chizuko.” Though brilliantly composed in warm hues — calling to mind the Sea of Grass — Citrine Blast is actually a picture of destruction in the wake of a landscape irreparably destroyed by the atomic bomb. In a vibrant room of imaginative Japanese prints, and a whole world of environmental storytelling, Citrine Blast adds a somber chapter to Sea of Grass as a portrait of our relationship with not only the earth but with each other.

Thus, the tour poses self-guided questions. In a world of optimism about unparalleled human innovation, how do we reconcile — with our past and present mistakes — the ever-intensifying calamity of our irreparable environmental alteration and destruction?

On its own, Sea of Grass is a necessary, honest look at the land we live on and the ecosystems we belong to in the Midwest. Objectively, Hage and Marcotty find hopeful solutions, even as things seem quite bad for our prairies; the havoc wreaked by pesticide use alone is staggering. As explored at the Mia, the book becomes an intriguing lens through which to view an engaging, important through-line in the museum’s uniquely Midwestern collection, exemplifying how art in general can shed new light on lingering dreams, past mistakes, and persistent worries.

The stories of ancient civilizations and contemporary societies around the world contain unexpected parallels and heavy truths, complimenting the science of words with the art of feeling. As the book leaves readers with a new consciousness of today’s environmental struggles, the tour is a reminder that anxiety about our earth’s future is nothing new.

Details

These public tours are free on Tuesdays and Thursdays as part of the “Public Tour: Inspired by Books” series.

September Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
October Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
November My Friends by Fredrik Backman
December Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker

January 2027 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

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