The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum Acquires work by Meghann Riepenhoff

Meghann Riepenhoff's Waters of the Americas: World’s End to the Mouth of the Mashpee River, Deluge from Residual Hurricane Ian Storms, Waves, Hingham to Cape Cod, Massachusetts 9.22.2022 (2022) has been acquired by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. 

 

This work is included in Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene, a traveling group exhibition organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Trustees of Reservations, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The exhibition is curated by Jessica May, Executive Director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and Marshall N. Price, Chief Curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

 

The exhibition is currently on view at the Anchorage Museum through April 5, 2026, and has previously been presented at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

 

A statement from the artist:

 

“In making the commission for Second Nature, my team and I found ourselves working amidst the dissipating, yet still powerful, remnants of Hurricane Ian at World’s End, all the way to the Mouth of the Mashpee River on Cape Cod.

 

Despite our best efforts to outrun the approaching storm, we were soon caught in its full force. The weather rapidly shifted, with powerful gusts of wind and heavy rain intensifying as the storm made its way toward us. The urgency of the situation heightened as we scrambled to protect the delicate prints, covering them with tents for shelter and even moving them underneath our cars to shield them from the worst of the weather.

 

The Waters of the Americas series, which this work is a part of, is made in waters affected by human activity and documents the profound changes in our climate and environment. Each year, we witness an increase in extreme weather events and storms, intensified by climate change. Standing in the rain of Hurricane Ian on the Cape, we experienced firsthand the very forces I aim to give shape to and collaborate with in these works.

 

The chaos of the storm added a raw immediacy to the experience, reminding us of the ever-present, unpredictable power of the environment—a stark reflection of the themes I am exploring in the Waters of the Americas series. The storm disrupted our process but, in doing so, it became an integral part of the work.

 

While working on the commission, I reflected on the transient and momentary nature of human existence, as compared to a geologic scale of time. My team and I found ourselves caught in the storm – dancing with Hurricane Ian when we could and waiting it out when the elements became too forceful. Yet this land has borne witness to countless storms over millennia. Beneath the churned-up sediment of the river mouth, so much history has been buried. The surrounding land has been shaped by the relentless power of water and time in ways that can often escape our comprehension.

 

Water was once the Earth’s most powerful force, carving and shaping the land over millennia – but, today in the Anthropocene, humanity has surpassed even water’s power to alter the landscape and climate. Second Nature offers a crucial reflection on the human impact on the natural world. And yet, we as humans are of the land and even made of water. It is a fact that I find particularly poignant because, even within us, water remains a fundamental force, shaping both our bodies and our environment in profound and ever-changing ways.” — Meghann Riepenhoff