Blank page; verso: Circle and Oval 1852

Editor: Here we have Sanford Robinson Gifford’s "Blank page; verso: Circle and Oval." It seems to be a page from a sketchbook. It’s quite small, and rather…empty. What narratives do you think this blankness evokes? Curator: Precisely. Consider the historical context. Gifford, a landscape painter, leaves us this "blank page." Is it truly empty? Or does it represent a refusal, a space for imagining landscapes free from colonial narratives, challenging the very act of representation and its inherent power dynamics? Editor: So you see the blankness as a conscious choice, a statement? Curator: Perhaps. Or a question. What does it mean to leave a space undefined, unmapped, especially during a period of westward expansion and the romanticized, often destructive, vision of the American landscape? It resists easy consumption. Editor: I see it now. It’s not just a blank page, but a loaded absence. Curator: Exactly! And perhaps, an invitation for us to inscribe our own narratives, our own critiques, onto this space.