Where do image-making and ecology meet…and how is Venus Williams involved? The legendary tennis player and longtime art collector lends her voice to a new podcast, “Widening the Lens,” launched to accompany “The Lens: Photography and the Environment,” a multidisciplinary exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The six-episode series explores the intersection between the arts, activism, and the environment, topics that Carnegie Museum of Art director Eric Crosby says are important not to shy away from. Just as working with a camera can expand one’s point of view, “Widening the Lens” invites viewers to question their sense of perspective and stance. Adds Dan Leers, the Carnegie Museum of Art’s curator of photography, “The project explicitly looks at how the camera can act as a tool to question inherited narratives about people and ecology, and foreground stories that are often overlooked or excluded.”
The podcast features Williams in conversation with renowned artists, writers, and scholars including A.K. Burns, Raven Chacon, Dionne Lee, Xaviera Simmons, and Sky Hopkina as they explore colonial legacies, charged landscapes, and more. (There is also a fully illustrated catalogue and robust public programming planned around the show, providing multiple points of access.) As Williams explains, her relationship with the outdoors, as well as the arts, has been lifelong, so it felt natural for her to take on a project that explored the various connections between the two. “It’s a real honor to host the Carnegie Museum’s podcast because it’s really deeply moving. It’s a project that integrates art and the environment and this really beautiful, full-circle storytelling. It’s about being able to provoke a discussion around one of the most critical issues facing the world today, which is our relationship to the environment, and the stories that are being told are so thought-provoking; so many words are being said through an image. Sometimes [the message] is dark—but that’s what art does. It makes us take a second look. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable. I feel like this is one of the best things I’ve ever had a chance to be a part of. I actually have a hard time being indoors. Most people wake up in the morning, get in their cars or whatever, and go to work. I wake up and go work outdoors. I live at the end of South Florida, where there’s such a wide expanse of land the trees—and it’s by choice, you know? So I really relate to this kind of storytelling. I love that Carnegie is taking this moment to not only highlight these artists, but highlight the environment such as a beautiful way. I think a lot of times when we’re talking about the environment, we’re talking about all the things that are happening. We’re not examining it in this kind of way. [On the podcast] we’re looking forward, looking backwards, and looking at the possibilities at the same time, and also examining the impact that we have had on the land historically, and how that relates to today. I’ve just been a lover and appreciator of the arts for my whole life, and then a collector for almost half my life. I never really saw myself getting involved in this way, but it happened kind of organically. It’s a domino effect: you do one thing and, the next thing you know, you have these critical opportunities that I’d never dreamed of. To have these kinds of impacts—first with Pace, with “Art for a Better World,” and now this thing that affects our whole planet—it’s beyond my dreams. I’m so grateful to be in this position, and to be a part of something that I truly love.”
It’s the kind of podcast where you just can’t stop listening. For me, it was very eye-opening to hear the stories and examine what the artists were taking note of. When you think of an artist like Ansel Adams, and how he went to photograph the West and the great outdoors, and unlocked areas of our land that we’d never seen before, the undercurrent of that was much deeper, in the sense of [giving other people] this opportunity to control and take these lands. I had not thought of it that way, or seen it that way. It’s interesting, the powerful effect that those photographs had on people’s lives and on the landscape. At the end, it’s about our connection to the Earth—it’s not just about the artists. It’s really capturing every person and our experience on this planet. So my hope is for people to take part in that, to open our eyes to what’s happening here, and—most importantly—find the solutions. [ .]
