BECOMING GEOLOGIC

Becoming Geologic invites visitors to explore Massachusetts’s geological and material histories, weaving deep time with human narratives to reveal our evolving relationship with the Earth’s materials.

MASSACHUSETTS : A GEO-SOCIAL TRANSECT
A painted elevation profile traces a geological cross-section of the state, guiding viewers from North Adams to Boston. Along this line, composite drawings delve into specific localities and their associated geo-materials, layering archival imagery, geological illustrations, and field notes to unearth stories embedded in local stones and landscapes. Beneath this geo-social transect, a long shelf displays physical samples collected along the route or borrowed from Harvard’s Mineralogical and Geological Museum, linking each material to its landscape of extraction.

THEORY OF CONGLOMERATES
The second part of the exhibition examines two key geo-materials found in Boston urban environment and replace them into the geological rock cycle. The Roxbury Conglomerate reveals how ancient geological formations have shaped the city’s history, identity, and urban fabric. In contrast, asphalt—often seen as purely industrial—is reframed as a geological formation, derived from fossil organic matter (bitumen) and contributing to Earth’s evolving stratigraphy as a marker of the Anthropocene.

By presenting these samples not as isolated artifacts but as part of broader spatial, historical, and social continuums, the exhibition highlights the importance of non-extractive practices and challenges how cultural institutions convey geological and material knowledge to the public. Through tactile and visual engagement, as well as alternative methods of classifying and describing geo-artifacts, Becoming Geologic invites architects, designers, and the public to develop a deeper sensitivity to geological materials—their formation, transformation, and future trajectories. It challenges us to see the built environment not as separate from nature, but as an extension of geological processes evolving in deep time.