The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

research and education organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding contemporary landscape issues in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Founded in 1994, the CLUI organizes exhibitions, programs, field trips, and maintains an online archive and database to engage the public's understanding of the man-made landscape, and extent and impacts of human interactions with the surface of the earth. The Center employs a variety of methods to this end, engaging in research, classification, extrapolation, and exhibition.

Mission

The mission statement of the CLUI is to "increase and diffuse knowledge about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived."

Programs and projects

The CLUI also executes exhibitions, research projects, and public programs. The Center's programs and projects cover many types of land uses in the US, including those related to agriculture, energy, industry, mining, communication, waste management, water resources, transportation, commerce, housing, recreation, and defense and preparedness. The organization produces exhibitions about land use

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

in the US, and displays them at its exhibit locations and at other museum and non-commercial and educational venues. The CLUI produces publications, online resources, tours, lectures, and other public programs across the country. Activities of the Center are summarized and discussed in its annual newsletter, ''The Lay of the Land'', in print and online. The CLUI's main office is in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

where it operates a display space open to the public. It also operates other facilities and interpretive sites throughout the US, including in Wendover, Utah, at a former military facility, where the CLUI operated an artist residency program from 1996-2016; and the Desert Research Station in Hinkley, California. CLUI is also the lead agency for the establishment of the

American Land Museum American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

, a network of exhibition sites in various interpretive zones across the country, which together form a dynamic portrait of the national landscape. According to Coolidge, the "man made landscape is a cultural inscription that can help us better understand who we are and what we are doing." The CLUI organizes public field trips to sites of interesting and unusual land use. This has been documented in the book, ''Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation.''

Reception

Neither an environmental organization nor an artist collective, CLUI resists categorization by maintaining a diverse, eclectic program of activities that invite a closer examination of "humankind's interaction with the Earth's surface." Writer and curator Lucy Lippard suggests the CLUI occupies “a tantalizing liminal space (that) has opened up between disciplines, between the arts, geography, history, archeology, sociology.” Culture writer Doug Harvey says that the Center is known for its "multidisciplinary examinations of human/landscape interaction, 'uncategorizable'." He refers to CLUI programs, such as the 2008 ''Post Consumed'' exhibit and bus tour as "subtly infused with formal beauty and wit ... unobtrusively informed by a patchwork of art historical, contemporary theoretical, sociological and geopolitical concerns and brimming with new information you don't know is here until the ride home." According to the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, the CLUI's activities "all tell some version of the same story: how we shape and find meaning in the physical landscape around us, whether it's through oil exploration, architecture, map-making or freeway building." The CLUI specializes in what writer Nicola Twilley describes as a "brand of perceptual revelation ... in which a previously overlooked site is made not only visible, but also legible as a guide to understanding larger, nationwide systems."

Online resources

The CLUI makes a collection of "unusual and exemplary" land use sites in the United States available online, through its

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

. The database compiles site-specific images taken by members of the CLUI, and are attributed to the CLUI Photo Archive. Also available through the CLUI website is the Morgan Cowles Archive, an online image resource that presents thematic photo collections, drawn from over 100,000 images of thousands of locations taken by a range of CLUI participants throughout the years, which exists though the support of "an endowment from the family and friends of Morgan Cowles, in his memory."

References

External links