Object number2025.44.2
Green Haven Correctional Facility, Stormville, New York
Date2002
CultureAmerican
MediumOil and acrylic on canvas
DimensionsImage: 39 1/2 x 56 in. (100.3 x 142.2 cm)
Framed: 46 1/4 x 63 1/4 x 3 1/4 in. (117.5 x 160.7 x 8.3 cm)
Framed: 46 1/4 x 63 1/4 x 3 1/4 in. (117.5 x 160.7 x 8.3 cm)
Credit LineGift of Barbara Knowles Debs, class of 1953, and the Debs Family – Elizabeth, class of 1981, Zoe, class of 2021, Nick and Isabel
On View
On viewPeriod21st c
Classification(s)
SignedOn verso, signed upper right in ink: Sandow Birk
InscribedOn verso, by artist, upper left in ink: "GREEN HAVEN CORRECTIONAL / FACILITY – STORMVILLE, NY"; upper right: [signature] / AUG. 2002; lower right: OIL & ACRYLIC ON CANVAS / 39 1/2" x 56" / (#2246)
On verso, printed label, left: DEBS & CO. / 525 WEST 26TH STREET / SECOND FLOOR / NEW YORK, NY 10001 / 212.643.2070TEL / 212.643.0026FAX / WWW.DEBSANDCO.COM; right: Sandow Birk / Green Haven Correctional Facility, / Stormville, NY / 2002 / oil and acrylic on canvas / 39.5 by 56 inches / Bir.33.54
Label TextAt first glance, this landscape by artist Sandow Birk appears much like the paintings that surround it—but a closer look reveals a crucial intervention. Green Haven Correctional Facility, the maximum security prison and namesake of this painting stretches along the horizon line, its concrete walls partially obscured by a cluster of trees bursting with autumnal colors. In 2002, Birk completed a series documenting all 15 of the maximum security correctional facilities in New York State, placing each facility within stylized replicas of different nineteenth-century landscape paintings. This painting borrows its composition from Albert Bierstadt’s 1886 landscape Autumn Woods, Oneida County, State of New York. However, the prison depicted is located in Stormville, almost 200 miles away from Bierstadt’s painted environment. Birk forsakes geographic accuracy to highlight the dissonance between sites of incarceration and their often picturesque rural surroundings. The experience of incarceration is purposefully obscured from us, both as viewers of this painting and members of a society that marginalizes those deemed worthy of punishment. The walls and watchtowers of Green Haven conjured in this painting represent the lives of real people and their struggles within the American criminal legal system.
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