Planet Ord
Fort Ord as seen through photo, films, and maps.
Exhibited from April 4 2020 – July 20 2014
Imagine shipping out to war tomorrow. What would your art look like today?
Fort Ord – once the largest military base in the American West – was a vital center during the twentieth century. It is now decommissioned and in transition. More than a million people lived and worked at Fort Ord, embedding the current architectural ruin with layers of murals and traces of their lives. Planet Ord explores the contemporary experience and historical echoes of this abandoned city, relating it to the many lost places in contemporary America.
This multi-media exhibition is guest curated by Enid Baxter Ryce, who reveals the artwork and stories within this ever-changing icon of Monterey County. Partnering with two students and alumni of California State University, Monterey Bay, Enid documents Fort Ord through film, photo, and carefully painted maps of this San-Francisco-sized military base.
Planet Ord is supported by War Comes Home, an initiative from Cal Humanities. This initiative Is part of Community Stories (CS), formerly known as the California Story Fund. CS is a competitive grant program that supports story-based projects that are informed by humanities perspectives, methods, and content; that reveal the realities of California and its cultures, peoples, and histories; and that will be of interest to local, statewide, and potentially even national and global audiences. CS aims to provide community-based and academic institutions the means to capture genuine and compelling stories from and about California’s diverse communities, and to ensure that those stories can be shared widely. To date, over 400 projects have been funded.
In the News
