Facing the Elements: Visualizing Weather, Then and Now

Five hundred years of art that engages with weather and climate.

Combining historical and contemporary treatments of weather and climate in art, this catalog features masterworks from 1500 through the present day that engage with weather, meteorology, and climate. Facing the Elements unites two exhibitions at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Essays on the four elements, women and weather, peril, and satire reveal changing attitudes following the Scientific Revolution, while interviews with a climate scientist and a psychologist who focuses on psychological responses to climate change, and an essay on an immersive installation by artists Christa Donner and Andrew S. Yang explores our physical relationship with climate today. From personifications to the sense of touch, and from storm-tossed peril to scientific progress, these artworks foreground the human connection to our atmosphere. Plates include unique graphic interventions by Donner and Yang made exclusively for the publication.
 

Samantha Cataldo is curator of contemporary art at the Worcester Art Museum.

Olivia J. Stone is assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts.