You were probably not surprised to find carefully curated lists of books and films in the LIBRARY but I suspect you will be amazed by the wealth of news about musicians and dancers, theater festivals and exhibitions in this ARTS section, all focused on global warming. It celebrates the composers and singers, painters, cartoonists and photographers, playwrights, actors and dancers wall of whom are bringing their gifts to bear on the challenges that climate change poses.
A climate change museum opened in New York catalyzing a cultural transformation around climate, inviting people from all walks of life into the conversation, and building community around solutions. Its opening show on January 25, 2018, bathed the outside sidewalk in a cool blue light from a video of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a new work by Los Angeles artist Peggy Weil.
Another New York artist, Eve Mosher walked almost 70 miles across Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, painting a chalk line showing the likely location of frequent flooding if sea levels continued to rise. And, then there is The Birth of Venus, which in this 21st century version, artist Chris Jordan replaces Botticelli’s paints with 240,000 plastic bags, equal to the number consumed throughout the world every ten seconds.
Photographers have also documented the damage we are doing and, in the 21st century, we are seeing more and more images illustrating the consequences of climate change – from Justin Sullivan and Noah Berger’s devastating photographs of the California’s Camp Fire to Paul Nicklen, one of the world’s foremost photographers of polar wildlife, and his photographs of vanishing ice. More and more, photography competitions are emerging around the theme of climate change. The Nature Conservancy in 2019 announced their winners, among whom, with great US images, were Tyler Schiffman, Raymond Hennessey, Robert Potts and Hao Jiang. In 2023, the grand prize went to the Hungarian photographer Tibor Litauszki with Third Place, Aerials going to the American Derek Robertson photographing winter in New York. Gorgeous.
And, performing artists are not to be left out. The classical and astonishing Italian composer, Ludovico Einaudi flew to the Artic to play his Elegy for the Artic on the ice. Billie Eilish, Coldplay, and the Dave Matthews Band are among musicians making efforts to reduce their carbon footprints.
Don’t miss The New York Times publication of a top ten list of pop climate change songs. After looking at lyrics from all artists over two years of Billboard charts in 2020, they found 192 references to climate change.
And, then there are infographic artists. Recognizing the complexity of explaining climate change, they have tackled it visually.