Calendar of Events

Lecture - Direct from Nature: Interdisciplinary exploration of 19th century art captures environmental change
Tuesday, September 10, 2024 5:30 pm

Understanding forests of the past helps us to understand current forest ecosystems and how they may change in the future. In this talk ecologist, Dana Warren, forest pathologist, David Shaw, and art historian, Harper Loeb, demonstrate how collaboration between art historians and scientists can unpack the complexities and potential opportunities that 19th century landscape art has to capture and quantify environmental change in eastern forests.

Historic landscape paintings are a potential treasure trove of information about the past with images that include early color depictions of forest and stream environments. However, the use of these images in ecological research has been hampered by questions of image validity: How truly accurate are the images portrayed in these paintings? Shaw, Loeb, and Warren present the results of an interdisciplinary project applying methods and knowledge from the humanities and from ecological sciences to answer this question.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, 1327 Circle Park Dr on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Hours: Tu-Sa 9-5. Information: 865-974-2144, https://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/