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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Mark Dion, N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation
N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation, by Mark Dion, 1992

Mark Dion, Artist
N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation , 1992

Medium
Mixed media: laboratory equipment; containers; lab coat; crates from Orinoco Basin, Venezuela; door with stencil of title
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Credit Line
Collection of Eileen Cohen, New York. Image courtesy Mark Dion and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Mark Dion makes elaborate sculptural installations that investigate how systems of classification, display, exploration, and preservation inform the construction of knowledge, especially where it concerns the natural world. More concerned with how knowledge about nature is ideologically driven than with nature itself, he explores the ways in which institutions help—and sometimes hinder—our understanding of the natural world and our position within it, questioning the authority of those institutions and their conventions. A precisely organized collection of office furniture, storage containers, implements for writing and measuring, maps, and books, The Department of Marine Animal Identification of the City of New York (Chinatown Division) was initially installed and performed in 1992 as one of three works in Dion's exhibition at American Fine Arts, Co., in New York City. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, Dion collected and documented the fish on offer at the markets in the Chinatown neighborhood adjacent to SoHo, where the gallery was situated. Also included in the 1992 show was N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation, which was similarly structured as an office-cum-laboratory in which Dion received and organized materials sent to him from the Orinoco Basin in Venezuela.