Extinct in New York
Extinct in New York
Over the past four hundred years, the living fabric of New York City has been radically reconfigured. Building and excavation, hunting and harvesting, extraction and exploitation have facilitated the arrival of new species and caused others to disappear.
The modern city is a microcosm of ecological catastrophe.
Concrete encases the earth where sphagnum bogs hosted orchids and carnivorous plants. An industrial waterfront replaced salt marshes and coastal dunes. When the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, the outflux of waste water suffocated the seaweeds of New York Harbor. The air changed. Coal smoke poisoned the lichens that had hung from hemlocks; a century later these trees too nearly vanished, plagued by an insect introduced with ornamental plants. Forests of steel rose in their stead, as human habitation stretched skyward.
Over a thousand species of native plants have been documented in New York City. Many persist within a hybrid urban ecosystem. Others have reappeared in managed green spaces. But New York’s herbaria hold records of loss. Some species have not been seen wild in the city for over a hundred years. Zostera marina, eelgrass, which formed marine meadows in New York Bay, was last collected in Jamaica Bay in 1883. Helonias bullata, the swamp pink with its spike of fuschia blooms, was last collected by Nathaniel Lord Britton, co-founder of the New York Botanical Garden, on Staten Island in 1892.
A city is also an incubator for life.
The city’s vast infrastructure for the support of human life sustains other species as well. Tall buildings give shelter to pigeons whose ancestors nested on Mediterranean cliffs. Subways maintain optimal temperatures for rats. In parks, gardeners tend to exotic species thriving far from the environments in which they evolved.
Extinct in New York is a project to nurture a selection of plant, algae, and lichen species that are known historically from New York City but are no longer found growing wild in any of the city’s five boroughs. The work imagines a city built not only for humans, but also for those species the growth of the city originally displaced. This is not a project of restoration or rewilding. The return of these species is enabled through technologies of human cultivation and care–a homecoming on life support.
Extinct in New York, 2019. Installation view.
Extinct in New York was shown at LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island September 19 - October 31, 2019. Organized by Swiss Institute. Following the exhibition, exhibited plants entered into existing greenspaces in New York City.
The surveys and historical research on which Extinct in New York is based are the work of the New York City EcoFlora Project at the New York Botanical Garden.
Extinct in New York exhibition checklist
Extinct in New York artist booklet
