Three Small Landscapes; Male Profile Head; verso: blank page 1860

Editor: Here we have Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Three Small Landscapes; Male Profile Head," a pencil sketch, undated, in the Harvard Art Museums. It feels intimate, like a peek into the artist's personal sketchbook. What strikes you about it? Curator: The sketchbook format invites us to consider the relationship between observation, representation, and power. Gifford, a white male artist, is capturing landscapes that may have been sites of colonial expansion and Indigenous displacement. What responsibility do artists have in depicting these spaces? Editor: That's a perspective I hadn't considered. So, by sketching these landscapes, is Gifford participating in a larger narrative of ownership and control? Curator: Precisely. And the male profile—who is he? What is his relationship to these landscapes? These are questions that help us understand the cultural context of Gifford's work and its potential implications. Editor: This has definitely made me think about landscape art in a completely new light. Curator: It's important to remember that art is never neutral; it always carries a social and political charge.