Groundwater Earth tells the hidden history of the largest distributed mass of freshwater on the planet. The fruits of groundwater are all around us: nearly half the global population drinks it and over half of all crops are irrigated with it. Groundwater extraction technologies are to agriculture and urban growth what the elevator was to the booming American metropolis of the early twentieth century. The exhibition traces for the first time the preposterous, practical, and perilous experiments with groundwater. It focuses on the Indo-Gangetic plains and Sonoran Desert—two major sites of experimentation with groundwater extraction since the nineteenth century. Combining over a decade of fieldwork in the Americas and Asia, with archival research undertaken in three continents and vast amounts of data collected using remote sensing satellites, Groundwater Earth examines the scales and slow-motion impacts of groundwater extraction on the tilt of the earth to the shape of cities and farms.
The Head, The Heart & The House: Migration and Modernism in King-lui Wu’s Domestic Architecture foregrounds the life and work of Chinese-born architect King-lui Wu (1918-2002), an active and influential member of the Modernist movement in the United States. Educated under Walter Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Wu’s vision for a post-war society merged the intellectual rigor of architecture (the head) with the emotional resonance of space (the heart). The exhibition showcases three residential projects in Connecticut—the Rouse, Dupont, and Manuscript houses—as prime examples that demonstrate Wu’s adaptation of Modernist aesthetics. They also highlight his attention to light, integration of the site’s natural surroundings, and use of simple materials. In each of the featured projects, Wu experimented with designing for domesticity. The exterior simplicity of Wu’s houses contrasts with their interior vibrancy, suggesting that a domestic life unfolds from the center outwards. Through the strategic use of wooden panels, sliding doors, and clerestories, his homes mediate the tension between inside and outside: privacy and public life.