The art: Pirkle Jones, The Graves Have Been Disinterred, Monticello Cemetery is Moved to Higher Ground, from the series “Death of a Valley,” 1956 (printed 1960). Jones and Dorothea Lange collaborated on “Death of a Valley,” which chronicled the last days of Monticello, Calif., before the town and the surrounding Berryessa Valley were dammed into Lake Berryessa. The reservoir is sited west of Sacramento, about halfway between the state capital and the Napa Valley wine-growing region. It’s one of the least-known great narrative photo-documentary series in American art.
The news: “Water, water everywhere, but not enough is saved,” by George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times. Skelton reports that California built its last dam in 1979. Since then the state’s population has increased by about 50 percent, or over 14 million people.
The source: Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. More of the series is online here.
