Baltimore community members have been donating recycled items and volunteering to help build "The Reverse Ark," an exhibition that illustrates the city's industrial past. The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, will serve as gallery, laboratory, workplace and studio to explore the social and environmental history of Baltimore's mills and textile industry in the site-based exhibition "The Reverse Ark: In the Wake," on view through August 22, 2009. Using the concept of an "ark" as a place of preservation and exploration, local citizens helped San Francisco-based Futurefarmers art collective create the multidisciplinary exhibition with locally sourced waste and surplus materials including fallen trees, hundreds of floorboards from abandoned row homes, cast-off paper and surplus clothing and textiles. Community engagement continues in The Reverse Ark Schoolhouse with public workshops, readings and discussions in an exploration of the environmental themes of the exhibition. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham