Image: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU, Pullman
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU in Pullman, Washington, will present ‘The Mirror that Nature Holds: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation’ from August 25 through December 12, 2026. The exhibition brings together 90 contemporary works examining nature as a site of wonder, memory, unease and possibility.
Organized by the museum, the exhibition draws on the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family’s foundation. Works span painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation, bringing together artists who address the sublime while considering the vulnerabilities of a planet under increasing environmental pressure. The exhibition’s themes include climate change, displacement, resilience and the role of storytelling in navigating ecological uncertainty.
The curatorial framework places contemporary practices in dialogue with the philosophical legacy of the sublime, including the transcendental landscapes associated with Caspar David Friedrich and the atmospheric expanses of J. M. W. Turner. The museum describes awe as an ethical encounter: an experience of being dwarfed by mountains, forests, oceans or skies that also recalls forces beyond human control.
Among the artists represented are Richard Dupont, Tacita Dean, Alex Katz, Christiane Baumgartner, Raymond Pettibon, Lucinda Parker, Marie Watt, Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston, Christopher Myers, and Alison Saar. The exhibition includes Sidhu and Swainston’s monumental woodcuts on fabric, which address climate anxiety as a lived condition, alongside works by Saar, Rashid Johnson and Julie Mehretu that examine ecological displacement through socioeconomic histories of survival and transformation.
Storytelling is another central thread. According to the museum, works by Myers and Vanessa German use narrative as a relational tool for connecting personal experience with planetary time and imagining forms of kinship across species and generations. The exhibition also includes speculative narratives, revived folklore and community-based approaches that seek to create new ways of understanding the relationship between human and more-than-human worlds.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube on Washington State University’s Pullman campus, at 1535 NE Wilson Road. The museum has 10,000 square feet of exhibition space and a permanent collection of more than 4,000 objects spanning regional, national and international artists from the eighteenth century to the present. ‘The Mirror that Nature Holds’ is funded by Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Endowment, and friends of the museum. A curatorial tour with Ryan Hardesty and guest artists is scheduled for September 3 from 4 to 5 p.m., followed by an opening celebration and Arts First Thursdays program from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition will be open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
