Daylighting Lenapehoking

Daylighting Lenapehoking brings Mohawk artist Alan Michelson and ecologist Eric W. Sanderson together at The Oyster to explore how art and science can surface and honor the Indigenous histories and ecologies embedded in contemporary New York, while considering strategies for recovering lost abundance.

Eric W. Sanderson

Eric W. Sanderson is an ecologist who sees nature through the city. He currently serves as the Vice President for Urban Conservation at the New York Botanical Garden, where he also directs the Center for Conservation and Restoration Ecology. Sanderson is the author of the bestselling book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (Abrams, 2009) and the soon to be published five-borough sequel, Before New York: The Natural Geography of the City (Abrams, out November 10. 2026). He is also the author of Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs (Abrams, 2013), on the (un)sustainability of the American economic system and how it might be reimagined with nature in mind. His work has been profiled in The New Yorker, National Geographic magazine, NPR, BBC, and The New York Times, and his TED talk has more 3 million views. He has published more than 65 papers and technical reports addressing problems in urban, wildlife, and landscape conservation, drawing on experiences from Mongolia to Tanzania to Patagonia to Brooklyn. Sanderson earned a Ph.D. in ecosystem and landscape ecology from the University of California, Davis, in 1998. Learn more about his work at urbanconservation.nybg.org.

Alan Michelson

Alan Michelson is an internationally recognized artist, curator, writer, and Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. For over thirty-five years, he has worked across multimedia installation, video, sculpture, and public art to engage place, memory, and suppressed histories.

His award-winning public art practice dates to 1990. The Oyster, his latest large-scale work commissioned by More Art, recently opened on Governors Island to broad press attention. The Knowledge Keepers, his acclaimed Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission, remains on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mantle, his public monument honoring Virginia’s Indian nations, was dedicated at the Virginia State Capitol in 2018.

His work is held in major collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and National Gallery of Canada. His essays have appeared in Aperture, Frieze, and October, and his work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Art in America, and The Art Newspaper.

Michelson co-founded and co-curated the groundbreaking Indigenous New York series with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, where he currently serves as a Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board.