Visualizing the Adirondacks and St. Lawrence River Valley

Above image: Charlie Reinertsen, Northern Peatlands No. 3, 2023, Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle photo rag 308 gsm paper, Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, SLU 2023.17

Visualizing the Adirondacks and St. Lawrence River Valley is a newly published online digital exhibition three years in the making. Created by students in “Adirondack Arts and Archives,” a First-Year Seminar taught from 2023 to 2025 by associate professor of English Mark Sturges, the virtual exhibition features 44 art objects, cultural artifacts, publications, and even a locally crafted wooden canoe that are part of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection or the Owen D. Young Library’s Special Collections. Several items in the exhibition were created by notable Haudenosaunee artists.

As part of the course’s semester-long visual analysis project, each student physically examined an bject or artifact; conducted research on the artist, medium, content, and context; and wrote an interpretive text panel for the virtual exhibition. The end result showcases a variety of visual representations of the region. Sturges writes, “I love the collaborative, public-facing nature of this project, and I’m very proud of the work that my students produced. Many people don’t realize what a great collection of materials we have in our art gallery and special collections library. At St. Lawrence, students have a chance to work with those materials in classes and independent projects, and in the spirit of the liberal arts, they learn to think critically about the meaning of visual and textual objects by situating them in cultural and historical context.”

Through this project, students not only gained a richer understanding of the artistic and cultural geography of the North Country and deepened their sense of place as Laurentians, but they also honed their practical skills of interpretive analysis and learned how archivists, gallerists, and museum curators present material objects to the world. This digital exhibition serves as a teaser inviting viewers to visit St. Lawrence University and examine first-hand its rich collection of materials associated with the Adirondacks and St. Lawrence River Valley.