Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment Favorite 

“Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment” is an important exhibition organized by the Princeton University Art Museum is on view at the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, from February 2 through May 5, 2019.

More than 100 major paintings, photographs, works on paper, and sculpture have been drawn from museum and private collections around the U.S. by leading American artists such as Ansel Adams, John James Audubon, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Dorothea Lange, Kent Monkman (Cree), Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob August Riis, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai), and Andrew Wyeth. The exhibition explores evolving ideas about the environment and our place within it and reveals the human impact on the planet over the last three centuries. It compels us to reconsider the relationships between art, the environment, and ourselves.

As stated on the Museum’s press release: “Nature’s Nation reconsiders American and Native American art within the context of environmental history and the study of living things’ relation to their surroundings. The exhibition highlights shifting visions and realities of nature as artists reflect and shape societal attitudes toward the natural world. As perspectives emerge, we are learning anew that the natural world is not a fixed concept but dynamic reality.”

“This timely exhibition opens on the heels of landmark reports from the United Nations and the White House that underscore the dire and impending consequences of climate change. Both conclude humans’ activities are having a dangerous impact on the environment and, as a result, there is an extreme risk of irreversibly affecting all human, built, and natural systems. It is critical to our time to acknowledge that humans, animals, water, land, and sky are all connected.”