In the beginning, there was Chaos, the abyss. Out of it first emerged Gaia, the earth, which is the foundation of all. - Hesiod, Theogony, ca. 700 BCE ***
Jane Washburn’s Genesis was added to the Lowe’s permanent collection in 1958, making it one of the Museum’s earliest acquisitions. Indeed, the University Art Gallery (as the Lowe was originally known) was inaugurated only eight years before the work was accessioned into the embryonic museum’s rapidly growing collection. 1958 is also the same year that Washburn carved this figure from limestone, suggesting that the piece was acquired directly from the artist. As its name suggests, Genesis is clearly a meditation on creation. The title may lead those familiar with the Judeo-Christian tradition to assume that the sculpture personifies God’s creation of the world and all its creatures—including the first man and first woman—as recounted in “Genesis,” the first book of the Old Testament. But the work also lends itself to a much broader, more nuanced interpretation.
All societies across time and space have origin or creation stories. Life springs from chaos or darkness or mud or the murky depths with the same outcome: the genesis of humanity and all that entails (see, e.g., Creation Stories from around the World). Thus, the figure—who is assuredly human but whose gender is ambiguous—represents all of us, including those who came before and those who will follow. This universal theme reminds us of the ties that bind all living creatures to one another as well as to our shared Mother Earth. It also reminds us that, literally and metaphorically, art is what makes us human.
