The Whitney Museum of Art in New York is currently presenting an installation by the environmentally focused artist couple The Harrisons for the first time since 1972. Titled Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard, the work features 18 live citrus trees and intends to bring attention to sustainable food systems in the face of ecological disaster. The renewed installation will be on view at the museum until January 1, 2025.
The Harrisons—the now-deceased artist couple Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison—were among the pioneering artists championing environmental advocacy through art in the early ’70s. Their work sought to address and mitigate the human-driven climate and environmental crisis.
“What [the Harrisons] were doing then was to address…climate change, 50 years ago,” said Esther Kim Varet, founder of the Harrisons’ representing gallery Various Small Fires. “The timestamp of when this work was done is actually incredibly significant…what we could have done then that we didn’t do for the next 50 years…realizing that it was so huge of a concern in the ’70s is mind-blowing.”
As the effects of climate change worsen, artists like the Harrisons, who have worked with these themes for decades, are finding long-overdue recognition. Before Newton passed away, he told Varet that: “the worse the environment does, the better we do, and it’s not something to celebrate,” according to the gallerist. Shortly before the Whitney show was announced, a works by the artists titled Making Earth (1970) (1970–ongoing) was acquired by LACMA from the gallery’s recent Frieze LA booth.
First staged at The Art Gallery at California State University in Fullerton, Portable Orchard comprises 18 live citrus trees meant to be maintained in a controlled environment evocative of possible self-sufficient food systems. To recreate this installation, the Nancy and Steve Crown Family chief curator Kim Conaty and senior curatorial assistant Roxanne Smith followed the drawing instructions created by The Harrisons, which is part of the museum’s permanent collection. These drawings detail how to build an indoor garden and how to sustainably care for the grove. It also provides recipes for the yielded citrus.
Portable Orchard is part of a series called “Survival Pieces,” which the Harrisons conceived between 1971 and 1973. These works were first designed to represent practical responses to pressing ecological issues, with Portable Orchard specifically addressing future scenarios where conventional agriculture in Orange County is no longer sufficient.
