Art, Ecology, and Climate: Atmospheric

One of several e-museums devoted to ecological and climatological topics, these artworks showcase the Earth’s air – and the pollutants and particles suspended in it – as a medium for sound, temperature, respiration, and light effects. While every work of landscape art necessarily represents atmospheric and weather conditions, the artworks chosen for this gallery visualize, draw attention to, and render palpable these conditions in different ways. We invite you to identify these differences and to think critically about them. How do the individual artworks shape feelings towards, evoke aesthetic responses to, or encourage stances towards air conditions, properties, and qualities? To what extent does the significance of a work change when considered in relation to modern atmospheric and climatic histories, including intensifying planetary warming, weather events and cycles, industrial pollution, and ozone depletion?

For images that more directly evoke or depict air quality, see other Art, Ecology, and Climate E-Museums, including “Extraction,” “Pollution and Contamination,” and “Power and Energy.”