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Annual Rings, 1968
Dennis Oppenheim (American, born 1938)
Mixed media; 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992 (1999.212)

Here, Oppenheim enlarged the patterns of the tree's growth and, by shoveling pathways in the snow, transposed the annual rings to the frozen waterway that divides the United States and Canada as well as their time zones. By juxtaposing man-made national and temporal boundaries, Oppenheim opened to question the relative values of the ordering systems by which we live.


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    Annual Rings, 1968
    Dennis Oppenheim (American, born 1938)
    Mixed media; 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
    Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992 (1999.212)