“I want people to understand that the environmental crisis is bound up inextricably in our cultural world and how we relate to each other,” Dr Wendy Nālani E Ikemoto is discussing Nature, Crisis, Consequence, which she curated for the New-York Historical Society. The show juxtaposes classics of 19th-century American naturalism with works by artists from communities largely left out of the historical narratives that these works have been central in enshrining. “It’s not just a problem of science and numbers, it is indivisible from the way we treat each other. How is the environmental crisis also a civil rights crisis?”
Running through 16 July, Nature, Crisis, Consequence emerged from a request made of Ikemoto to create a show to feature the NYHS’s 19th-century Hudson River school paintings. Among the Society’s most popular holdings, the Hudson River school works show a romanticized, pastoral version of well-known landscapes upstate from New York City, now thoroughly marked by human development and activity. “They wanted them back on view because they’re so popular,” said Ikemoto, “but I didn’t want to just put these paintings back on the wall.”
