Unsettled Ground: Art and Environment from the Smart Museum Collection
Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago (March 22 – June 26, 2022)
How has the environment shaped artistic practice, and how can these artistic forms help us to understand our local and planetary environment in new ways? Unsettled Ground explores the interaction of art and ecology as a dynamic conversation that gains new meaning against the background of our climate crisis. Featuring artworks in a wide variety of media from the Smart Museum’s collection, this exhibition invites visitors to consider how artists have engaged with the natural world, interrogated its transformation at human hands, and amplified stories of dispossession and resilience embedded in the earth.
This exhibition was collaboratively curated by Katerina Korola and the students of her seminar, “Picturing the Earth: Art and Environment in the Modern Era.” Over Fall 2021, the students worked together to research, conceptualize, and develop interpretive materials for the exhibition. The exhibition’s digital platform can be visited at this link.