Closed Summer 2024

Beginning May 27, we will be closed as part of Oberlin College’s Sustainable Infrastructure Program.

Learn More

Address
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College
87 North Main Street, Oberlin, OH 44074
440.775.8665

Hours

Tuesday — Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Monday, Sunday Closed
Open until 5:00 p.m. & always free

Exhibitions & Events

The Allen presents changing exhibitions along with engaging guest speakers and public programs.

Learn More

Art at the AMAM

The Allen's collection is particularly strong in 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting, Japanese prints, early modern art, African art, and more.

Learn More

Collections

Conservation

Provenance Research

Image Licensing

Art Donations

Learn

Explore the full range of museum programs through free events, guided and self-guided tours, and resources for professors and PreK-12 teachers.

Learn More

Resources

Find podcasts, activities, and information for all age groups.

View All Resources

Join & Support

Support for the museum continues our tradition of bringing art to the people.

Learn More

Running the Numbers: Photographs by Chris Jordan

March 11 - June 15, 2008
In Ellen Johnson Gallery

Running the Numbers: Photographs by Chris Jordan

March 11 - June 15, 2008
In Ellen Johnson Gallery

Chris Jordan's photographs investigate contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. The themes of environmental stewardship, mass consumption, waste, public health, and social justice are explored through haunting, large-scale images, which cause the viewer to directly confront numbers through a visual medium.

Each work portrays a specific quantity of a particular item: 15 million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use), 426,000 cell phones (the number retired every day), 106,000 aluminum cans (30 second of consumption). As Jordan plays with size and scale in these vast photographs, assembled from thousands of smaller ones, he also causes us to examine our role, responses, opinions and actions as members of a consumer society and as inhabitants of both a man-made and natural world. Images representing the quantities involved have a different and more powerful lasting effect than the raw numbers alone, which can often be mind-numbing and feel remote from daily life.

Jordan has stated, "Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing... this project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible and overwhelming."

Organized by Andria Derstine, curator of Western art.

Organized by

Andria Derstine

Curator of Western Art

Memberships

Support appreciation for original works of art by becoming a museum member.

Join Today