“Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance” is the work of Boston-area artist Heidi Whitman. The mixed-media installation at the New Bedford Whaling Museum is named for Captain Ahab of the whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville’s epic novel “Moby-Dick,” who becomes consumed with his desire to pursue and slay the whale that bit off his leg. Whitman spoke with afternoon host Mareva Lindo for this week’s Weekend 401 feature
“Ahab’s Head: American Vengeance” is on display now at the New Bedford Whaling Museum through May 3, 2026.
Heidi Whitman will be giving an artist talk in the installation on Sunday, Feb. 15, from 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.
Interview highlights:
On the inspiration for this 5-year project.
Well, it really started in March of 2020, when at the beginning of the pandemic, everyone was told to go home. I left my studio. I sat in my armchair and I reread Moby Dick one chapter, more or less, a day, which was a great experience. I had read Moby Dick in high school, and I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate it to the same extent I do now. And it’s such a beautiful book, so profound, so mystical and a great sea voyage. But I was most drawn to the idea of all the vengeance and violence in the book, and wanted to connect it to contemporary America, which isn’t hard to do these days.
On how the themes of obsession, violence and vengeance relate to the present moment.
In human nature, we have lots of things we wish we didn’t have in us, sort of all the negative sides. But I think Ahab is famous for his vengeance and his obsession. And in today’s America, we have so much, we have an epidemic of gun violence. We have political violence, and we just have, we have just plain violence. So it was easy to connect the book with today’s world.
On the meaning of the title, “Ahab’s Head.”
I actually had done a number of drawings over the years of heads as almost containers of experience with things outside and things inside the head, always interested in consciousness. So I ended up immediately making this extremely large head shape, and I think of it as either Ahab’s head or perhaps Moby Dick’s head. Sperm whales, of course, have huge heads, and so this gigantic assemblage is filled with whale eyes and human eyes and weaponry. So that’s the head.
On the significance of Heidi Whitman’s favorite passage from “Moby Dick.”
“While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and forever, threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, ‘til it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts. Some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.”
It’s as if he himself had become a chart with these lines on his forehead. He was so obsessed and so involved in trying to find this one white whale in all of the world’s oceans that he and the shadows were very important in this, too. So in my installation, there’s a rectangle, but in most of the walls, there are fictitious wailing voyages that I’ve drawn and painted on the walls with acrylic paint and pencil, etc. And so these shadows are created because in the middle of the installation, there’s a sea of white rope string netting, and that casts shadows that hopefully feel ominous. And so I think this chapter in Moby Dick with Ahab definitely fits right in with this idea.
On what the installation will look and sound like for visitors.
When you enter, there are a great many white ropes, string netting hanging from the ceiling to the floor, creating those shadows against the walls. There’s two on either end of the room, and there are these two very large assemblages or constructions made with canvas, string, rope, paint, wood, foil. And one of them is Ahab’s head, and the other refers to the destruction of the Pequod, the ship. So there’s a lot of black in it. There’s a lot of wood [and rope] in it. So those two anchor each end of the room. The white ropes are casting these shadows on the side walls. And there’s a column right in the middle of the room that is also floor to ceiling. It’s made with a lot of different kinds of fabric covering this column and ropes, and it kind of goes down to the floor and pulls into dried paint, and it’s kind of a torrent of blood. And also in the room there’s sound. I worked with a sound designer, David Raposo, who created a four-minute loop of ominousness. … And also in the hallway, there’s a collection of 19th-century muskets and harpoons that I selected from the whaling Museum’s collection to sort of add to the atmosphere of weaponry.
On feeling like Ahab while spending five years on this project.
I think there were times when I just did not want to look at it and think about it, and I would go and work on something else and sort of move it to another part of my studio, because it is intense, as is looking at the paper every day and thinking about how we have a president and a government who are just perfect for this book, for Ahab.
