Mother Nature, AKA Valerie Hegarty, Alters Jasper Francis Cropsey

How would you go about updating, reinterpreting, a Hudson River School painting? We'll soon see one answer, from artist Valerie Hegarty.

On Wednesday, Hegarty will install a site-specific work on the High Line, the elevated park built on a disused rail corridor along the Hudson River, which is turning out to have a snug connection with contemporary art even before the Whitney Museum branch is built there (if it is).

Her "artwork often poses as artifacts of art history gone awry," and this installation -- on the wall between section 1, which is complete, and section 2, which is under construction -- references a painting (above) by Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn on the Hudson River, 1860.

Cropsey's painting, owned by the National Gallery of Art, was painted from memory in the artist's London studio. It "created a sensation among many British viewers who had never seen such a colorful panorama of fall foliage," according to the NGA website.

Hegarty's work is not so beautiful. Her take on a Rothko is at right. For the Cropsey, the High Line says, she "imagines a nineteenth century Hudson River School landscape painting that has been left outdoors, exposed to the elements."

Nature becomes the artist -- and what does nature do?