Since early civilization, time has been measured by the movement of celestial bodies: the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the movement of star systems across the sky. Humanity now typically subscribes to a linear understanding of time, one that has been measured to the nanosecond. Whether quantified in minute increments or in vast spans, how we perceive time influences which experiences and aspirations we most value. Altering our sense of time, then, can offer a sense of perspective with respect to not only our personal experience, but also the larger place and purpose of humanity.

Drawing from the Museum’s collection and beyond, A Point Stretched: Views on Time presents artworks that stretch, warp, and compact the viewer’s sense of time. Artists in the exhibition use the full spectrum of artistic mediums, including traditional painting and drawing, collage, ceramics, metal working, photography, animation, and video. In their efforts to capture some representational aspect of time, these artists reveal that time is, to our perception, constantly in motion, indefinite, and infinite. By highlighting works that endeavor to conceive of time in unusual and mutable ways, A Point Stretched challenges the histories we tell and the expectations we hold for the future.

Paramount to the included works is an adamant resistance to subscribe to linear time, which prioritizes forward motion and progress. Artists in the exhibition instead propose timelines without hierarchies of past, present, and future. Chitra Ganesh blends reality and fantasy by synchronously depicting a woman’s life, death, and birth. Maia Cruz Palileo references oral histories and archival documentation of the Philippines to render a kaleidoscopic view of Filipino history and rewrite the artist’s own understanding of this fractured past. These artists present themselves and humans as palimpsests, or accumulations, of time, ideas, and histories.

This concept is also fundamental to Ala Ebtekar’s 36 Views of the Moon, a collection of night exposures on book pages from texts referencing the night sky. Carefully selected from the artist’s personal library, the source material spans ten centuries of thinkers and poets. Ebtekar used a photographic negative of the moon from Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton to make the cyanotypes, which are arranged to form a monumental print of the moon.

Impending climate change and dramatic biodiversity loss similarly highlights apparent limitations of dominant understandings of time. Scientists traditionally classify geological timescales, which span millennia, in terms of biological collapse. They frequently describe human impact on our environment as comparable to that of an asteroid in how quickly and acutely we have caused massive and destructive changes in global ecologies. Works by Richard Misrach and Sam Richardson draw on this theme, presenting seemingly natural and untouched views of Earth that in reality depict landscapes that have been dramatically altered by human actions.

Are we on the brink of annihilation, a future where humanity and Earth cease to exist? Many moments in the gallery suggest that catastrophe is inevitable and imminent, if not already upon us. Diana Al-Hadid's work creates a ruin of the inventor Al-Jazari's functional timepiece, suggesting civilization’s decay and eventual collapse. Patrick Nagatani’s prints emphasize long-term repercussions of nuclear mining on communities. Kahlil Robert Irving reflects the cosmos above us in a ceramic sculpture that compacts millennia of human detritus.

In their reflections on time, these works demonstrate an awareness of humanity’s inventiveness and simultaneous capacity for destruction. At the same, these works project a sense of optimism that catastrophe, or an awareness of it, can lead to positive change. Ranu Mukherjee’s video presents a fictional future landscape cluttered with discarded solar panels, yet over time the solar power they absorbed gives rise to a flourishing fruit orchard.

Memories, dreams, and reality blend in these galleries as mold creeps across TV screens, apple orchards grow among discarded solar panels, and melting wax measures time. Generational, ecological, and cosmic time vibrate concurrently, as long-ago ecologies and distant, possible futures intertwine. Embracing scales of time from the microbiological to the interstellar, these artworks position our human existence within broader timescales to challenge our assumptions about human history, agency, and possibility in relation to the world—and universe—around us.

Use the Brown Bag button to download the MER exhibition notes.  

A partial list of artists in the exhibition includes Diana Al-Hadid, Harold Edgerton, Chitra Ganesh, David Huffman, Michael Lucero, Richard Misrach, Ranu Mukherjee, Patrick Nagatani, Russell Crotty, Maia Cruz Palileo, Sam Richardson, and Gail Wight, as well as non-collection artists including St. Louis-based Kahlil Robert Irving and Ala Ebtekar from the Bay Area. This exhibition is organized by Nidhi Gandhi, curatorial and programs associate.