Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis

A new exhibition travels back to the dawn of the industrial age and traces the origins of climate change through the eyes of scientists, artists, and writers.

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (French‐British, 1740–1812), Detail, Iron Works of Coalbrook Dale in The Romantic and Picturesque Scenery of England and Wales, 1805, aquatint in printed book, 15 3/4 x 11 3/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

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In 1884, British writer and art critic John Ruskin gave a series of lectures called “The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,” where he expressed concern over the changing appearance of the English sky due to the smoke generated by coal-fired factories.

Now, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, California, has launched new exhibition inspired by Ruskin’s lectures; it travels back to the dawn of the industrial age and traces the origins of our climate crisis.

Highlighting today’s environmental issues within a historical context, “Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis,” examines the profound changes that industrialization and a globalized economy have wrought on everyday life.

Unknown, Oil Well Fire, ca. 1920s, photograph, 5 3/8 x 3 7/16 in. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Open to the public on September 14th as part of Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Southern California’s largest public art initiative, “Storm Cloud” features nearly 200 items, including scientific illustrations and specimens, rare books, photographs, and manuscripts (including Henry David Thoreau’s handwritten draft of Walden), in addition to paintings, drawings, and textiles from The Huntington’s expansive collections as well as from galleries in Britain and the United States.

“Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis.” Photo by Elon Schoenholz. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

The exhibition offers a fascinating and extensive overview of 18th to early 20th century humanity’s new relationship with and understanding of the natural world.

“By moving from England in the late 18th century to the Western United States in the early 20th, the exhibition covers the coal-powered Steam Age and the emergence of our current petroleum-based economy,” says Karla Nielsen, Senior Curator of Literary Collections at The Huntington and co-curator of the exhibition.

A pair of drawings that illustrates Ruskin’s “Storm Cloud” lecture —Thunderclouds, Val d’Aosta (1858) and Cloud Study: Ice Clouds over Coniston (1880) — are on loan to the exhibition from the Ruskin Museum and Research Centre at Lancaster University (U.K.). Works and paintings by John Constable, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Edwin Church “reveal how the environment was affected by human actions during their lifetimes,” says Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington’s curator of British art and co-curator of the exhibition.

Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867, oil on canvas, 48 3/8 x 84 5/8 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. The Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt Collection. Image courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Like many of his contemporaries, Ruskin was deeply engaged in current scientific developments. Over the course of the 19th century, the sciences of geology, paleontology, meteorology, and botany expanded human knowledge about the interdependence of life-forms in what we would come to know as ecosystems.

With the increasing systemization of these disciplines, natural scientists also began to better understand the potential for human action to disrupt Earth’s biosphere.

A surprising number of those 19th century natural scientists included pioneering women working — often without recognition or reward — in the nascent fields of paleontology and climate science.

Mary Anning, a British woman working on England’s southern Jurassic Coast, was pivotal in finding the first ichthyosaur and plesiosaur fossilized skeletons. However, Anning’s significant discoveries did not grant her acceptance into The Geological Society in London.

Portrait of Mary Anning with her dog Tray (Wikimedia Commons)

Kristen Anthony, Assistant Curator for Special Projects, notes that “her findings were key in other paleontologists’ understanding not only of past life forms, but of the age of the Earth and the developing science of paleontology at the time.” This groundbreaking work revolutionized how scientists calculated the age of the Earth, which at the time was believed to be only 6,000 years old.

At a time when writers like Ruskin and Thoreau were noting environmental changes on the earth and in the sky, American scientist and inventor Eunice Foote was measuring the potential impact of those changes as part of early 19th century climate science research.

Foote was the first person to publish studies on the heat trapping effects of CO2 (then known as carbonic acid gas) and how it could create a warmer atmosphere. Her demonstrations of “the greenhouse effect” in her own home laboratory were performed in 1856, three years before Irish scientist John Tyndall published and was fêted for similar findings.

For 21st century visitors, “Storm Cloud” serves to remind that “we (human society) have known of our capacity to devastate the environment for a long time,” notes Assistant Curator Anthony.

Rebeca Méndez (Mexican American, b. 1962), Any‐Instant‐Whatever, 2020, film still from 90‐minute two‐channel looping video. © Rebeca Méndez.

An important diagnostic tool on display at the exhibition helps visitors visualize today’s ecological storm clouds and brings the discussion full circle into the 21st century.

The Rockström Diagram of Planetary Boundaries, developed at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009 by Johan Rockström and a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists, is the most convincing visual tool for understanding the climate crisis. The Boundaries demonstrate and quantify how they’re interrelated to one another in maintaining a stable and resilient Earth. The Centre points out that these crises can only be solved through collaborative local, national, and global efforts.

The Rockström Diagram of Planetary Boundaries (Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023)

Early conservation pioneers like John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall, founders of the Audubon Society, also sought collaborative solutions by creating organizations to preserve public spaces and protect wildlife during a time of profound industrial change. Today, the path through climate challenges is through similar collective action.

“Storm Cloud” and the Huntington exhibition “Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China” will run concurrently until January 6, 2025, as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a regional event presented by Getty featuring more than 70 exhibitions and programs and exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present.

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