Storm cloud : picturing the origins of our climate crisis / edited by Melinda McCurdy and Karla Nielsen.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McCurdy, Melinda, editor.

Nielsen, Karla, editor.

Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, host institution.

PST ART: Art & Science Collide (Project)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science and the arts--History--19th century--Exhibitions.

Science and the arts.

Technology and the arts--History--19th century--Exhibitions.

Technology and the arts.

Human ecology in art--Exhibitions.

Human ecology in art.

Human ecology in literature--Exhibitions.

Human ecology in literature.

Nature (Aesthetics)--Exhibitions.

Nature (Aesthetics).

Climatic changes in art--Exhibitions.

Climatic changes in art.

Art, Modern--20th century--Themes, motives--Exhibitions.

Art, Modern.

Genre:

exhibition catalogs.

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

vii, 165 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press ; San Marino, California : in association with The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, [2024]

Summary:

"'Storm Cloud'" analyzes the impact of industrialization and a globalized economy on everyday life from 1780 to 1930, as charted by scientists, artists, and writers, and contextualizes the current climate crisis within this historical framework. 'Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis' traces the rise of environmental awareness in the 19th century--an age of rapid industrialization in the English-speaking world as well as a period in which the sciences of geology, paleontology, meteorology, and ecology developed. A revealing exploration of how prescient nineteenth-century artists, writers, and scientists began to sound the alarm on climate crisis. The title comes from a lecture by the writer and art critic John Ruskin, in which he described the changing appearance of the sky due to industrial pollution. British and American visual and literary artworks by the Romantics, the Pre-Raphaelites, and members of the Arts and Crafts movement are displayed alongside key scientific texts and images, as well as works by early 20th-century preservationists John Muir and Mary Hunter Austin. The exhibition also documents water use and oil extraction in the Los Angeles region in the early 20th century. Through nearly 200 items drawn from The Huntington's collections and on loan from collections in the United States and Britain, 'Storm Cloud' places our current climate crisis in its historical context, examining the profound changes that industrialization and a globalized economy have wrought on everyday life, as charted by scientists, artists, and writers for over 150 years. The questions and issues addressed in the historical material are brought to the present with the inclusion of works by five contemporary artists: Binh Danh, Rebeca Méndez, Jamilah Sabur, Leah Sobsey, and Will Wilson"--The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens website.

"Against a backdrop of industrialization and scientific development that reshaped humanity's relationship to the planet, nineteenth-century artists and writers began to express a novel perception of humanity's place in, and impact on, the natural world. This essential volume traces, in art and literature, the growing understanding of the industrial world's effect on the environment. It features works from both sides of the Atlantic, including paintings, photographs, scientific illustrations, and books by Mary Hunter Austin, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, John Constable, Henry David Thoreau, and Carleton Watkins. These are discussed by experts, including artists, art and literary historians, scientists, environmental activists, and representatives of Indigenous knowledge. Examining a nascent environmental awareness through the intersection of art and science, contributors highlight this intertwined historical dialogue and what it can tell us about today's climate crisis. The title references lectures by the Victorian writer John Ruskin, in which he described how decades of observing the English skies led him to conclude that his own age had created a disturbing "storm-cloud"-smog caused by burning coal. Though he wouldn't have understood it in this way, his lectures became one of the earliest published considerations of human-caused climate change"-- Yale University Press website.

Contents:

Directors' foreword / Sandra Brooke Gordon and Christina Nielsen

Essays. Seeing through the storm cloud / Melinda McCurdy and Karla Nielsen ; Forms of water : infrastructure and improvement in the ninteenth century / Nicholas Robbins ; "They fetch the year about me" : Thoreau's ways of knowing / Kristen Case

Short essays. Patterns of strata / Jan Zalasiewicz ; Imagining distorted scale : learning from the Hitchcocks / Gillian Osborne ; Hoping for John Brett's Glacier of Rosenlaui / M Jackson ; Viewing stations in the English Lake District / Karen Lloyd ; Skying Rachel Storer ; The Hope Lands, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica, in 1826 : an agent of climate change / Veront M. Satchell ; There is no painting over a colonized ecosystem / Suzanne Pierre ; Thomas Cole's Portage Falls on the Genesee / Dennis Carr ; Thoreau speaks to us about climate change / Richard Primack ; John Muir in 2024 / Kim Stanley Robinson ; A paya (water) society / Alan Barock ; Awakening to the Anthropocene : understanding soil, a critical resource / Nicole Cavender ; The promise of smoke / Kristen Anthony ; The unlovely forests of Los Angeles / Jonathan S. Blake ; The storm-cloud of the twenty-first century / Rebeca Méndez.

Notes:

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Storm cloud: picturing the origins of our climate crisis, organized by The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, September 14, 2024-January 6, 2025"--Colophon.

"PST ART: Art & Science Collide"--Colophon.

Color illustrations on lining papers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0300276141

9780300276145

OCLC:

1430414179