CHANGE: A Permanent Ship-Based Polar Art Exhibit

WHY IT RATES: Lindblad Expeditions is hosting the first-ever permanent ship-based polar art installation.—Donald Wood, Breaking News Senior Writer.

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CHANGE, a first-of-its-kind art exhibition aboard Lindblad Expeditions’ polar new build, National Geographic Endurance, will be an innovative ship wide installation curated by acclaimed artist, Zaria Forman, whose dramatic large-scale pastel drawings documenting climate change are exhibited worldwide.

It is the first-ever permanent ship-based polar art installation, incorporating a wide-ranging collection of drawings, paintings, video, photography, sculpture, and more, from 35+ artists. The collection has been assembled making use of the entire ship—both public and private spaces–themed deck by deck. From polar light and intimate looks at vast geographies, to human history and exploration in polar regions, to how we have come to understand it, the art provides guests the richest polar experience possible – and provokes thought and change.

The groundbreaking curatorship marks a pioneering expedition team role for the cruise line. When the time came to envision art for National Geographic Endurance, Sven Lindblad collaborated with Forman, and it became clear to them both that they create an exhibit of her work and a network of artists dedicated to expressing responses to endangered polar geographies.

Challenged to mount the definitive polar exhibition, her curation brings together a diverse group of multimedia artists in one finest collections of art examining the power and vulnerability of these rarified geographies anywhere in the world.

All the ship’s public spaces and 12 guest suites will feature original pieces, each including artist statements and quotes to give viewers a deeper understanding of how and why these environments have impacted the artist and their work.

The exhibit includes experiential pieces, like a John Grade sculpture of glass and resin suspended from the ceiling that invites guests inside to enter sea ice floating on the surface of the ocean. Replicas of ice cores taken from Greenland’s ice sheet will run the span of a four-story staircase. Glass portholes that look into tiny hyper-realistic environments sculpted by Patrick Jacobs will reveal themselves with fisheye luminosity. The crackle of ice, looped on a sound recording, will provide guests the ability to hear the melodic songs of air trapped in the ice for hundreds of thousands of years being released into the atmosphere as a glacier melts.

The exhibit also seeks to broaden guests’ perspectives – literally in the sense that it includes views not normally accessible to polar explorers, like undersea and aerial. And figuratively, with a look at National Geographic’s history of polar exploration that urges us to consider how those reports and stories shaped Western people’s first impressions and perceptions of these places through a collection of photographs and the earliest recorded polar film from their archives.

The launch of the 126-guest National Geographic Endurance, the first polar new build in Lindblad’s history, is a major milestone in the line’s legendary polar heritage. In 1966, inspired by National Geographic magazine, Sven’s father, Lars-Eric Lindblad, pioneered the first expedition to Antarctica for citizen explorers. Now, National Geographic Endurance is the 21st-century embodiment of the Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic’s joint commitment to explore and understand the world.

For more information, reach out to your local travel agent.

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SOURCE: Lindblad Expeditions press release.

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