In the wing and Opatrny Galleries, Floor 2L
Naples: Course of Empire is a series of seven panoramic paintings by American artist Alexis Rockman (born 1962) inspired by Thomas Cole’s nineteenth-century cycle The Course of Empire. Executed in Rockman’s signature style of history painting, the works examine the long and fraught relationship between human civilization and the natural world.
Using Naples as a case study for vulnerable port cities, the series traces the region’s ecological history from the Mesozoic era through moments such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the bubonic plague. It then projects a speculative future shaped by overfishing and rising sea levels, culminating in a post-human landscape where marine life overtakes the city’s ruins.
In The Departed, Rockman depicts extinct and critically endangered Mediterranean species beneath the waterline, while above, a sequence of fishing vessels charts the escalating exploitation of the sea. Acquario di Napoli imagines the city’s aquarium submerged by rising waters and inhabited by invasive species such as lionfish.
The paintings are accompanied by field drawings of native plants and animals that were made using lava, ash, and molten stone, some collected from Vesuvius. Together, these works use metaphor and emotion to convey ecological urgency in ways that scientific discourse often cannot—inviting viewers to reflect on both the past and possible futures of our shared environment.
The presentation of this exhibition was organized by Andrea Inselmann, the Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and supported in part by the Ames Exhibition Endowment and the Jan Abrams Exhibition Endowment.
Above: The Departed (detail), 2024. Oil and cold wax on wood. Courtesy of the artist.