CLIMATE DISASTERS
INSPIRED BY GREAT MASTERS

In the summer of 2023, my brilliant art director, Mary Tiegreen, sent me an image of New York under water inspired by a great French artist, which she had built using a visual AI tool. I was fascinated and we began imagining a larger exhibition of images. With that in mind I sent her a list of climate change causes and consequences. She immediately matched them with great artists in the public domain (in order to avoid any copyright issues). The result, Climate Disasters… Inspired by Great Masters, can be seen here.

The 36 causes and consequences all come from this website. The images were all created by Mary working primarily with Microsoft’s Bing AI although she occasionally uses other AI visual tools. As we uploaded each new image, we added information to the signage so that the viewer would be informed about its connection to climate change, whether cause or consequence. We also provided a link to a deeper dive on the particular subject. That link takes the viewer deeper into the website. And, of course, a biography of the artist was provided.

The page on Sea Level Rise, inspired by Hokusai, demonstrated what I am describing, perfectly*.

It was our hope that the paintings would be framed and hung in a physical exhibit next to the information explaining the relevance to climate change.

And, our hope came to pass on October 19, 2024 when the exhibition went on view at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) as a part of their annual Open House. The Observatory is a research institution specializing in the Earth Sciences and climate change. Part of Columbia University, it is located on their campus in Palisades, New York.

We are honored to have been selected by the LDEO, a substantial source of data for the US government in relation to climate change.

We recognize that journalists are having as hard a time finding ways to write about climate change as people are having learning about it. It feels abstract until it turns into a wildfire or a flood at which point it often just becomes weather, not climate. It is our belief that people’s fascination with AI can be a bridge. We believe this exhibition is a bridge to understanding the depth of climate change causes and consequences, not to mention that the images are spectacular in and of themselves.

It is our hope that information will lead to involvement and action.

*Sea Level Rise, inspired by Hokusai, is a perfect example. You see the painting, a bio of the artist, and a short paragraph (each painting has this) explaining the connection to climate change. When you experience the exhibition on the website, there is a link in the lower right-hand corner which takes you to that section on the website. When you experience the exhibition physically there is a QR code, accessing that deeper dive.