{"id":27514,"date":"2026-04-10T21:30:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=27514"},"modified":"2026-04-10T21:40:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:40:19","slug":"heidi-whitman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2026\/04\/10\/heidi-whitman\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Whitman’s \u2018Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blood. And destruction. Those are the central elements of Heidi Whitman’s 2025 one-room installation “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance\u201d<\/a> at the New Bedford Whaling Museum from Dec. 13, 2025, to May 3, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Boston artist\u2019s installation is inspired by Herman Melville\u2019s 1851 epic American whaling novel \u201cMoby\u2010Dick.\u201d And this museum is a good place to contemplate the tale since New Bedford is one of the stops the novel\u2019s narrator makes\u2014and where he attends church at a version of the Seamen\u2019s Bethel <\/a>across from the museum\u2014before heading to sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On one end wall of the gallery, Whitman\u2019s installation has what looks like the bloody, monstrous silhouette of a head, presumably captain Ahab of the novel, the man fatally obsessed with hunting down the white whale Moby-Dick. The collage evokes a cross-section of bloody flayed red meat and viscera dotted with staring whale eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the wall at the other end of the gallery is a collage depicting the shattered black stern of Ahab\u2019s ship, the Pequod\u2014an explosion of planking, actual black ropes and knots, and depictions of historic guns, contemporary automatic rifles, nets, globe maps, and whales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between, white ropes and ripped shear fabric dangle from ceiling like smashed sails and rigging or haunted cobwebs or maybe bubbles floating up toward the surface of the sea. In the middle of it all is a pillar of red and black fabric, streaming down from the ceiling, that somehow brings to my mind blood torrenting down from a whale being butchered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn March 2020 I reread \u2018Moby-Dick; or, the Whale,\u2019 one chapter a day. The dread and obsession in this great novel of whaling and the ocean echoed how I felt at that time in the pandemic,\u201d Whitman has written. \u201cMy installation, \u2018Ahab\u2019s Head: American Vengeance,\u2019 in referring to \u2018Moby-Dick,\u2019 addresses the relentless American obsession with violence. White ropes and string hanging throughout the installation cast shadows on wall drawings depicting fictitious charts of whaling voyages. A sense of ominousness pervades the mapped space. The extraordinary chapter in \u2018Moby-Dick,\u2019 \u2018The Whiteness of the Whale,\u2019 particularly inspired this installation. Ahab and Moby-Dick are doppelgangers. As evil twins they’re out for mutual destruction. In their total focus they epitomize vengeance. A wall hanging\/assemblage at one end of the installation bristles with whale and human eyes. Another large construction conjures up the sinking of the ship, the Pequod, and the darkness of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whitman\u2019s imagery is blood and the automatic weapons of our present wars and school shootings. Of late, I\u2019ve come to think of the violence of \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d could also include a different sort. Maybe the book is a 19th\u00a0century gothic novel about a toxic workplace as well as a global warming prequel\u2014with all its mad, destructive business of decimating the whale population just to acquire oil to burn up in lamps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 How Puppet Magic Brings Plexus Polaire\u2019s \u2018Moby Dick\u2019 To Life<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 How I Ended Up In A Boat With Captain Ahab Chasing The White Whale In A.R.T.\u2019s \u2018Moby-Dick\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by\u00a0contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And\u00a0sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a>\u00a0so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9 Greg Cook 2026 or the respective creato<\/em>rs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman, “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance,\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, March 2026. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman “Leviathan D (26),” 2025, ink, gouache and acrylic on paper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Heidi
Heidi Whitman “Leviathan D” series 2022-2025, ink, gouache and acrylic on paper.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blood. And destruction. Those are the central elements of Heidi Whitman’s 2025 one-room installation “Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance\u201d at the New Bedford Whaling Museum from Dec. 13, 2025, to May 3, 2026. The Boston artist\u2019s installation is inspired by Herman Melville\u2019s 1851 epic American whaling novel \u201cMoby\u2010Dick.\u201d And this museum is a good place to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[1385,1387,1386,174,1388],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27514"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27635,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27514\/revisions\/27635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}