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Spotlight: The Importance of Reciprocity

Climate justice activist Xiye Bastida’s perspectives are brought to bear on Thomas Cole’s iconic landscape painting The Oxbow.
This article is part of Spotlight, a series that features new perspectives on a single work from The Met collection.

Climate justice activist Xiye Bastida witnessed firsthand the injustices of climate change in her small town of San Pedro Tultepec in Mexico. When she moved to New York for school, she started to organize. Bastida’s perspectives are brought to bear on Thomas Cole’s iconic landscape painting The Oxbow.

The Spotlight series features new perspectives on a single work from The Met collection each month. Familiar and celebrated works serve as the focal point for dialogue—posing questions, building understanding, and conveying how the presence of the work in the Museum has altered, limited, or enhanced the work’s interpretation. The series explores different ways of knowing, and relates to themes beyond art and museums through the expertise and personal experience of invited guests.


Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula
Audio
Two scholars discuss misconceptions about race and polychromy in the ancient world.
Sarah Lepinski and Dan-el Padilla Peralta
July 7, 2022
Archaeologist Ulrike Koch Brinkmann painting a copy of an ancient Greek sculpture
Video
Archaeologists Vinzenz and Ulrike Koch Brinkmann reflect on how reconstructing the former color of an ancient Roman bust can help us better understand history.
July 7, 2022
Limestone Assyrian relief with a low-relief carving of two men bearing gifts
Audio
Two scholars consider the displacement of Assyrian people and their art.
Sarah Graff and Sargon Donabed
August 3, 2022

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