The land on which our museum is built
2021
Photos by Caitlin Taber

The land on which our museum is built is a physical compilation of land acknowledgements publicly posted online by large and small art museums in the United States. The statements are juxtaposed with information about the museum's assets, collection size, and the square footage of the building or campus each organization assumes.

This information indicates the disparity between the public words of respect delivered by the institution, and the wealth and resources it controls, including land. This was also an investigation of the similarities and differences between statements in terms of content and word choice. As someone who has been on the inside of institutions who feel immense pressure to produce public statements like these, researching their structure was driven by a personal curiosity and a sense of intense skepticism.