EXHIBITIONS
What’s Missing?
Olana State Historic Site
June 14 – November 2, 2025
By Ellen Harvey and Gabriela Salazar
Organized by The Olana Partnership
Olana is the most intact historic artist’s environment in the United States, encompassing the Main House and its extensive collections, an historic farm complex, and the 250-acre naturalistic landscape designed by Frederic Church between 1860 and 1900. Despite its remarkable state of preservation, several of Olana’s extant structures dating to Church’s time were removed years prior to Olana becoming a National Historic Landmark and New York State Historic Site. In these structures’ absence, stories of the people who built and used them and the functions they served have also been lost.
Visible foundations and archaeological evidence survive for some of these missing structures. In other cases, only photographs, maps, or oral histories bear witness to their past existence. These buildings may have vanished, but their stories remain embedded within Olana’s landscape.
For What’s Missing?, The Olana Partnership commissioned artists Ellen Harvey and Gabriela Salazar to create site-specific outdoor artworks that respond to these missing pieces of Olana’s landscape history.
