Art and the environment

Both man-made and natural changes to the environment are important subjects in art's history.

How Climate Changes Art

By The Art Assignment

Throughout history, art has helped reveal the climate around us and highlight our fragile relationship to it.

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Entropy and environment at Smithson's Spiral Jetty

Entropy and environment at <em>Spiral Jetty</em>

By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Drought and rain govern when this work of art in Utah’s Great Salt Lake can be seen.

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Mesa Verde and the preservation of Ancestral Puebloan heritage

By Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, Dr. Steven Zucker

Archaeological sites are under constant threat from human and natural forces.

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Saving Venice

By Dr. Steven Zucker, Lisa Ackerman

10 inches—that’s how far Venice has sunk. As sea levels and tourism rise, can this historic city survive?

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Navigation Chart, Marshall Islands

By Dr. Jenny Newell, Dr. Steven Zucker

Master sailors fashioned these maps from sticks and cowrie shells, registering relationships between land and sea.

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Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe

Michel Tuffery, <em>Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)</em>

By Dr. Billie Lythberg

Tuffery’s iconic “tinned bull” addresses contemporary concerns about ecological health and food sovereignty

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Mogao caves at Dunhuang

By Dr. Jennifer N. McIntire

Located at a desert crossroads along the Silk Road, these famous caves boast wall paintings and colorful sculpture.

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Endangered coastlines and lifeways

By Courtney M. Leonard, Dr. Beth Harris

A Shinnecock artist's view

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Framing the American Dream

By Dr. Steven Zucker, Elizabeth Gerber, LACMA

Building the American dream in the California desert.

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The battle for National Parks

By Dr. Beth Harris, Erin Monroe, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

Captured here in paint, this grand Californian landscape would soon disappear under water.

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The landscape remade

By Dr. Lauren Palmor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Dr. Steven Zucker

Can the commonplace working farmland of California's Sacramento River Valley be a place of of breathtaking beauty?

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A breath of fresh air, NYC’s Central Park

By Dr. Paul A. Ranogajec

To bring “polite sociability” to the city, designers blended nature’s greatest hits into one ambitious park.

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