Surface Dirt
Some environmental emergencies during the 1930s were visible, none more so than the untethering of topsoil from America’s great plains. Following unprecendented drought and extreme temperatures—Nebraska reaching 118 degrees in 1934—there was virtually no moisture left in the top three feet of soil. Beginning on 9 May 1934, one of the largest dust storms evacuated some 350 million tons before eventually blowing out to sea, where it deposited dust on ships’ decks 300 miles offshore (Worcester 10-14). Over most of the decade only Vermont and Maine escaped drought years, although for New Yorkers Dust Bowl history likewise may have appeared remote, albeit spectacular.
“Clad in a mantle of vegetation,” wrote Glenn K. Rule of the Soil Conservation Service, “the innumerable pleasant landscapes in America’s Northeast seem to deny any present or past wastage of soil resources.” This was an illusion. The greatest damage here was, instead, “the comparatively imperceptible effect of widespread sheet erosion” leading to what he called a “wounded soil” hiding under pasture or overgrowth. Interestingly, symptoms and their underlying causes can be discerned in many of the New Deal Gallery landscapes, however stylized.
In 1938, Rule focused most of his attention upon current farm practices, but he references an American history of “chop, crop, and get out” stretching back centuries (2). A series of 19th- and 20th-century laws encouraged rapid expansion of farmlands. The Homestead Act of 1862, then two amendments (the Kincaid Act of 1904 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909) were implicated in poor soil management practices and speculative farming—and thus conditions facilitating the Dust Bowl. An overarching cause of the Dust Bowl has to do with soil, or “Dirt,” that was left untethered to the ground by means of deep-plowing of the topsoil, as well as other agricultural methods that hindered the ability of soil to re-root itself. Contemporary agriculture is, if anything, even less inclined to focus upon soil rather than crops due to larger fields, mechanization, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and genetically modified seeds. Each year, American farms lose enough dirt to fill a pickup truck for every family in the country (Montgomery).
What does this have to do with canvas paintings and their surface dirt? David R. Montgomery writes, “The history of dirt suggests that how people treat their soil can impose a life span on civilizations” (3). A dramatic event like the Dust Bowl is uncommon; it’s far more likely for erosion to occur, unnoticed, through neglect until gullies appear or fields lose their fertility. Conservation is about proactive caretaking before we’re finally confronted with our mistakes.
So how does the New Deal Gallery stand ontologically as an establishment in the context of “surface dirt?” Natasha Geiling, a Smithsonian reporter, claims that in the field of conservation, “there are two primary methods of preserv[ation] […] in situ conservation […] where the sample in question is preserved within its ecosystem, and ex situ conservation, where the sample is preserved outside of its ecosystem” (Geiling). In this context, the mediums housed in the New Deal Gallery are a representation of ex situ conservation practices, for most of the mediums of art that call this gallery home do not originate there. The paintings have been purposefully placed in this space under the assumption that they will be protected – this space serves as a cultural repository that didactically acts as both a public display of the former aesthetic response to social events, as well as the emotion that was evoked as a response to said events. The practice of ex situ conservation relies on the establishment of a protective residency (New Deal Gallery), meaning that ontologically speaking, the space itself has significance and must be maintained as well in order to continue to perpetuate the conservation methods of art housed there.
Works Consulted
—Montgomery, David R. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. University of California, 2007.
—Rule, Glenn K. Soil Defense in the Northeast (Farmer’s Bulletin No. 1810). Soil Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture. 1938. Web version available here.
—Worcester, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford, 1979.
—Geiling, Natasha. From Lack of Diversity to Lack of Funding, Seed Banks Face a World Of Challenges. Smithsonian, June 17, 2016. Web version available here.