Whitman College Magazine Winter 2022

ON BOYER AVENUE
KIM FETROW ’96 OF KIM FETROW PHOTOGRAPHY
CAMPUS EXHIBIT
Maxey Museum
Explores
Confluence of
Art and Archives
more than two years in the making, Maxey Museum’s
most recent exhibit, “Along the Columbia: Maya Lin and the
Confluence Project,” explored the series of six earthworks by
renowned sculptor and architect Maya Lin installed at historical
locations on the Columbia River.
The public art project, commissioned by a group of arts
patrons and tribal leaders of the Columbia River Plateau and the
Pacific Northwest to commemorate the bicentennial of Lewis and
Clark’s 1804–1806 journey to the Pacific Ocean, was a massive
undertaking. Its archival materials—including blueprints,
site surveys, models and maquettes, drawings and sketches by
Lin and the artists, architects and engineers with whom she
collaborated—which were donated to Whitman College in 2018,
formed the core of the Maxey exhibit. “Along the Columbia” was
created and curated by the museum’s director, Libby Miller, along
with Penrose Library archivists Ben Murphy and Dana Bronson,
and Matt Reynolds, associate professor of art history and visual
culture studies, who is writing a book about Confluence. The
physical exhibit, featured by The New York Times in April
2021, closed in December, but you can still explore it virtually at
alongthecolumbiaconfluenceexhibit.com.
Along the river. The Maxey Museum exhibit featured archival materials related to the
planning of the sites that make up artist Maya Lin’s Confluence Project, including these
models of the Vancouver Land Bridge (middle) and of the “listening circle” ampitheater at
Chief Timothy Park (bottom).
6 / WHITMAN MAGAZINE