Kay WalkingStick at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Kay WalkingStick’s Thom, Where are the Pocumtucks (The Oxbow), 2020 is installed alongside Thomas Cole’s 1836 View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, in Gallery 759, In Search of Wilderness at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
 
Widely regarded as one of Cole’s greatest achievements, the painting presents a sweeping view from Mount Holyoke, contrasting untamed wilderness with cultivated land, and includes a self-portrait of the artist confronting the viewer. Often described as a proto-environmental work, it reflects on the rapid transformation of the American landscape and calls for the preservation of its sublime qualities.
 
In response, WalkingStick recentres Indigenous presence within this scene, overlaying a Nipmuc design to acknowledge the histories and communities absent from Cole’s vision, offering a critical and restorative reimagining of the American landscape.