by Mirra-Margarita Ianeva

The Weather and the Whale exhibition revisits historical and contemporary representations of whales across myth, literature, oral storytelling, and visual culture. In contrast to the profit-driven narratives of American settler and commercial whaling, several artists in the exhibition foreground stories rooted in cooperation, reciprocity, and reverence for whales and their habitats. Their work critically engages with the legacies of settler whaling and later environmental discourse, drawing attention to small-scale fishing traditions that are non-extractive and sustenance-based.

This study guide delves into the shifting visual culture surrounding whales and whaling, exploring how images have influenced and redefined our understanding of whales.

REFLECT
Think about your own relationship to whales. What images, stories, or representations have shaped your understanding of them?

The First “Oil Industry“

The American whaling industry began in the 1750s and primarily targeted sperm whales, right whales, and bowhead whales in the Atlantic Ocean. Through the mid-nineteenth century, it played a central role in the industrialization and urbanization of the US, with whale oil serving as a primary resource for lighting and machine lubrication. Although the rise of cheap petroleum during the Pennsylvania oil boom of the 1860s signaled the industry’s decline, whaling did not disappear overnight. Ships continued to set sail and deliver oil back to US ports—albeit at a slower rate—until the final commercial whaling voyage in the 1920s. 

Until the early 1860s, newspaper reports about the “oil industry” or the “price of oil” referred to whaling and whale oil.

JAMIE L. JONES, Rendered Obsolete

American whalers were not only hunters but also chroniclers of the ocean. Many assumed the roles of artists, naturalists, and scientists, recording their knowledge of whales and whaling journeys in charts, illustrated logbooks and journals, engravings, and natural history studies. Several of these materials are featured in the Weather and the Whale exhibition, offering a window into how whales were viewed as commodities to fuel the global energy economy.

1) Death Maps

The chart below, title Whale Chart, by American oceanographer and naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury was first published in 1851. Commissioned by the US Navy’s Hydrographic Office, it synthesizes decades of whaling logbook data to identify the locations and seasonal movements of various whale species. By the time of its publication, whale populations in the Atlantic Ocean had been heavily depleted, prompting American whalers to expand into the Pacific Ocean. Intended as a tool to lead whalers to new hunting grounds, the chart can be read as a “death map”—indicating the places where different species were killed.

Another series of charts included in the exhibition was made in 1935 by Charles Haskins Townsend, a conservation-minded zoologist. These charts were commissioned by the New York Zoological Society and represent the distribution of various whale species based on logbook records from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Though positioned as tools for conservation, these maps also reflect a utilitarian view of animals as resources to be managed. Townsend, who was director of the New York Aquarium for over three decades, advocated for the captivity of endangered animals for public education and is known to have killed endangered elephant seals during marine expeditions to collect display specimens.

DISCUSS
Compare the Maury and Townsend charts. What similarities and differences do you notice? In what ways are they both “death maps”?

2) Scrimshaw: “the whaler’s folk art”

While oil was the main product of the whaling industry, whaling voyages also brought back other products: ambergris, used in perfumes and medications, and baleen, used in corsets and umbrellas. In the late 18th and early 19th century, American whalers also began making carvings on whalebone, giving rise to a new art form known as scrimshaw. Scrimshaw was made during the long stretches of downtime between hunts. Often blending reality and fiction, it offers valuable insight into how whalers viewed and mythologized the hunt.

These four scrimshaw were carved by whalers at various points in the history of New England whaling, from its peak in the mid-1800s to the early 20th century. They show imagery typical for the art form, including a ship flying the US flag, a map of New England whaling ports, a pair of sperm whales, and two domestic scenes. The carvings were made on sperm whale teeth, which, judging by their relatively small size, belonged to young whales.

One of the scrimshaw, shown above, depicts a woman wearing a corset, likely copied from a 19th-century magazine illustration. Whalers often carved items like needle cases and pie crimpers from whalebone as gifts for their wives, and fashion accessories marketed to women—such as luxury umbrellas and corsets—were commonly reinforced with baleen, a strong but flexible material extracted from the mouth of certain whale species. By the early 20th century, the use of baleen as corset stiffener had declined as overhunting had driven up its cost. These objects reflect the gendered patterns of labor and consumption that sustained the whaling industry.

In their generous gift-giving, whalemen leaned on reductive ideas about women’s lives, particularly that they were synonymous with the domestic sphere.

MARINA DAWN WELLS, The Wider World & Scrimshaw

To learn more about scrimshaw in a global context, read “Maritime Media and the Long Eighteenth Century” by Maggie M. Cao 

3) Logbook Stamps & Illustrations

In the 18th and 19th centuries, records of a ship’s voyage were entered daily by the ship’s first mate into logbooks, which were used for the management of the ship. These records included information like weather conditions, wind direction and windspeed, the ship’s course, distance traveled, and any noteworthy events. While logbooks were rarely illustrated, beginning in the 1820s logbook keepers started using whale stamps—usually shaped in the form of specific whale species—to mark each whale sighting or kill. These stamped entries, along with the illustrations found in whalers’ personal journals as well as on scrimshaw, provide as much insight into whaling history as into the individuals who documented these journeys.

The Weather and the Whale exhibition includes two logbook stamps (pictured below) hand carved out of wood. The one of the left, which is shaped like a sperm whale, would have been used to indicate that a whale was successfully caught; the one on the right, which only shows a fluke—the raised tail of a diving whale—would have been used to indicate a failed pursuit.

In some logbook stamps, such as the ones pictured below (not included in the exhibition), the body of the stamped whale also included space to note how many barrels of oil or spermaceti were extracted—a potent visual expression of how the significance of whales was reduced to their economic value.

Whaling in California

As anticipated by the Maury chart discussed above, in the second half of the 19th century American whalers turned their attention to the Pacific Ocean, including the coast of California, in search of more abundant hunting grounds. Around 1851, a new practice known as “shore whaling” emerged in Monterey Bay. Several shore whaling stations were built and operated over the following decade, from Half Moon Bay to San Diego. In this type of whaling, whales were pursued in boats launched from the shore, then towed to the beach where they were stripped of their skin and blubber, a procedure called “flensing.”

Among those active in this region was Charles M. Scammon (1825–1911), a whaler and naturalist who published The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America in 1874—an illustrated study of cetacean zoology featured in the Weather and the Whale exhibition.

In the book, Scammon documents various marine mammals, focusing on the whales and seals of California and Baja California, Mexico—important breeding grounds targeted by whalers. The book describes the morphology, swimming styles, migration patterns, and mating habits of different species, providing whalers with practical knowledge to better identify and hunt them. The author’s background as a whaler is evident in the detailed descriptions and illustrations of whaling methods and implements, including different types of harpoons, guns, and hand lances. The language used to describe whales—‘monsters of the deep’—also provides justification for these killings.

The book contains several passages in which Scammon describes how whalers deliberately targeted breeding grounds, where parent whales were more vulnerable and easier to hunt. In these accounts, drawn from whalers’ own words, mother whales defending their young are often referred to as “old cows” and “Devil-fish”—terms reflecting how they were perceived as a nuisance and threat to the commercial objectives of the hunt.

By refusing to leave her calf, a mother risked her own life. This fidelity to one’s calf was also enacted through great force. American whalers referred to grey whales as “Devil-fish” because the mothers reacted with such immense power as to be a force of destruction, thrashing to upturn whaling boats and keep near their young.

ALEXANDRA MOORE and LULING OSOFSKY, Weather and the Whale catalogue

REFLECT
Consider the different ways the historical whaling objects mentioned above depict whales, both in images and in words. What do these labels suggest about how whales were understood and valued?

The Sentience of Whales 

Contrasting this perspective of the whale as a resource—weather passive or belligerent—Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo’s work in Weather and the Whale highlight instead the sentience of whales. 

Indigenous Stories of Interconnectedness and Reciprocity

Other artists, like Mexican/Italian-American and Chumash artist John Jota Leaños, highlight Indigenous narratives that emphasize the interconnected and reciprocal relationships among all living beings.

Competing Perspectives on a Whale’s Value at the Bering Strait

In her essay “What is a Whale? Cetacean Value at the Bering Strait, 1848–1900,” environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth also looks at the contrasting ways Indigenous and settler communities have understood and valued whales in the northern Pacific, specifically at the Bering Strait—the narrow waterway linking the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. She notes that when American whalers began hunting at the strait in the mid-1800s, they brought with them very different views of what a whale represented, diverging from those of the Iñupiat, Yupik, and Chukchi who had long been hunting bowhead whales in those waters.

Their [American whalers] rituals of slaughter and profit are a study in the expectations of a growing market. They sailed into a place where whales were not for sale but were instead understood as souls by the Iñupiat, Yupik, and Chukchi who hunted them with expectations of a world constantly reincarnating and never easy to survive.

BATHSHEBA DEMUTH

Caycedo, Leaños and Demuth each reframe Pacific coast geographies through perspectives that challenge settler whaling’s focus on dominance, exploitation, and profit.

DISCUSS
Consider how whales are portrayed across the various visual cultures explored in this study guide. What are other visual cultures—beyond those discussed—that also represent whales in interesting ways?

Credits:
Videography by John Raedeke
Installation shots by Glen Cheriton