Can the art produced in the United States over last fifty years help us model a new human-nonhuman relationship for the era of climate change?

The John F. Kennedy Institute of American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Terra Foundation for American Art are pleased to invite you to this year’s Berlin Terra symposium, “Nature” in American Art Since 1970: Reconceiving the Human-Nonhuman Relationship? which will be delivered online via Webex on May 19, 2020, 4.30 pm-7 pm (Central European Summer Time). (USA start times: 7:30 am PDT/8:30 am MDT/9:30 am CDT/10:30 am EDT.)


Exploring the intersection of art and climate change, the symposium asks whether the art produced in the United States over the last fifty years can help us model a new human-nonhuman relationship for the era of climate change. Has recent American art imagined any viable alternative to the modern idea of nature as the passive “other” to human agency, an object or image to be exploited or protected by “man”? What role might art play in the cultural transformation that will be necessary for stopping climate change? The symposium brings together a small group of leading scholars and invites them each, through close analysis of works of art, to propose answers to these questions.

Speakers include Alan C. Braddock, Robin Kelsey, and Shannon Jackson. Organized by Joshua Shannon.

The symposium is free and open to the public. No registration required. Event language is English.