Renaissance of the Earth

Thomas Burnet, The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1684)
The frontispiece of this text depicts a geological history of the earth that includes the flood, followed by the formation of continents as the waters receded. Burnet also speculates that the earth will undergo a fiery conflagration before it returns to an Edenic state.
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Visitors to the exhibit opening gained hands-on experience using the Kinney Center’s 20th Century acorn press to print an excerpt from Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth.

Antonin Boulenger, Traite' de la sphere du monde (1688)
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Thomas Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (1635)
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Suzette Marie Martin, Cherubim of the Flaming Sword (2023)
This original work combines language and text from the IPCC Report (2021), Vulgate Bible (1495), Hierarchie of Blessed Angels (1634), and Traité de la Sphère du Monde (1688). Together these materials offer viewers an allegory of consequences for industrialized humanity’s cumulative, destructive behaviors.

Students and members of the Amherst community listen intently as artist Suzette Marie Martin discusses her process, interspersing images and text from current IPPC reports with images from early modern earth science and geological studies and the Vulgate Bible (1495).

Vulgate Bible (1495)
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Marjorie Rubright, Kinney Center Director, welcomes guests to the opening of Apocalypse: Science & Myth.

John Woodward, An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth (1695)
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Robert Boyle, Paradoxica Hydrostatica Novis Experimentis (1677)
Held in the Kinney Center’s rare book collection.

Suzette Marie Martin, Hydrostatica Paradoxica (2023).
Held in the Kinney Center’s permanent art collection.

Martin’s depiction of Eve in a posture of grief comments on our own lived experiences of climate grief and eco-anxiety.

Visitors to the exhibit view the materials integral to Martin’s process, learning more about how she incorporates ideas and imagery from our rare books into her art.