Members and Volunteers Preview: The Water Understands

Join us for the preview tour of our new exhibitions, The Water Understands,andWater: Collection Stories

The Water Understands takes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Wateras a starting point. In the poem, Emerson imbues the element of water with subjective human experiences – understanding, heartbreak, wit, the ability to destroy, and alternatively the ability to enjoy pleasure. It is the understanding, or the water’s metaphorical ability to imbue us with knowledge, which is at the core of this exhibition – knowledge of the past, cultural knowledge, traditional knowledge, poetic knowledge, political knowledge, and aesthetic knowledge – knowledge systems which inform the artists and artworks in this exhibition.

The artists selected for The Water Understandswork within a broad range of cultural narratives, and using different media, allowing for an exhibition that thoroughly interrogates the metaphorical qualities of water from multiple perspectives.

Image detail: Douglas Schofield, The Spring Has Moved, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist