Tribute to Shorty Harris 1994

Among the artists that have contributed work to the museum, probably the one who felt most out of place in the desert was Belgian artist Fred Bervoets, appointed a Knight of the Order of Leopold II by the King in 1988. His “portrait” sculpture of Shorty Harris (an early miner in Death Valley and its environs) and a penguin has elicited countless questions. The miner makes sense, but why the Antarctic bird? Word has it that Bervoets wanted to include in his sculpture an indication of how “alien” he felt in the Nevada desert. The penguin was the most out of place entity the artist could think of to represent his own feelings of displacement under the Mojave sun, a self-portrait then as a penguin in the desert.