“Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis” Set to Open Sept. 14

SAN MARINO, Calif.—“Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis,” a major exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, is set to open on Sept. 14 to put today’s environmental issues in historical context and examine the profound changes that industrialization and a globalized economy have wrought on everyday life, as charted by artists, scientists, and writers during the 19th century. On view in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, through Jan. 6, 2025, “Storm Cloud” will feature nearly 200 items, including scientific illustrations and specimens, rare books, photographs, manuscripts, and ephemera, in addition to paintings, drawings, and textiles from The Huntington’s expansive collections. These materials will be supplemented by key loans from other collections in the United States and Britain. The exhibition will be complemented by a richly illustrated companion book of the same title.

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

The structure of “Storm Cloud” is rooted in The Huntington’s collections—whose strengths are in art and historical materials from the British and American empires, as well as the history of science—showing scientific findings in conversation with works by artists and writers to reveal the deep interconnections between art and science. The exhibition’s title “Storm Cloud” comes from a series of lectures given in 1884 by British writer and art critic John Ruskin. In “The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,” Ruskin expressed concern over the changing appearance of the English sky due to the smoke generated by coal-fired factories. A pair of drawings that illustrate his “Storm Cloud” lecture—Thunderclouds, Val d’Aosta (1858) and Cloud Study: Ice Clouds over Coniston (1880)—will be on loan to the exhibition from the Ruskin Museum and Research Centre at Lancaster University (U.K.). Ruskin made drawings of the sky throughout his life. These records of his observations helped him understand how the appearance of the sky had changed due to industrial pollution.

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 would later be termed “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 broad range of objects will trace growing environmental awareness over the course of the 19th century. Significant paintings by artists of the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite movements and the Hudson River School will be shown alongside rare manuscript materials, such as Henry David Thoreau’s handwritten draft of . Photographs of western American mountain ranges will be displayed alongside materials from the archives of early 20th-century conservationists John Muir and Mary Hunter Austin. “Artifacts—including rocks, pocket watches, top hats, and textiles—reassert the link between objects of everyday life and the histories of their extraction and production. The exhibition connects fossils and fossil fuels, cotton plantations and the Luddite rebellion,” said Karla Nielsen, senior curator of literary collections at The Huntington and co-curator of the exhibition. “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.”

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Douglas and Eunice Erb Goodan Endowment. Additional funding is provided by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Neilan Foundation, The Ahmanson Foundation Exhibition and Education Endowment, The Melvin R. Seiden-Janine Luke Exhibition Fund in memory of Robert F. Erburu, and the Boone Foundation. 

This exhibition is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: High-resolution digital images available on request for publicity use. Request Images]

About The Huntington

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is a cultural and educational institution of global significance. Building on Henry E. and Arabella Huntington’s renowned collections, The Huntington supports research and promotes education in the arts, humanities, and botanical science through the growth and preservation of its collections; the development of a community of scholars, school programs, and partnerships; and the display and interpretation of its extraordinary resources for diverse audiences. The Huntington is located at 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, California, 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Visitor information: huntington.org.

About PST ART: Art & Science Collide

Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 70 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art.

Contacts
Keisha Raines, 626-405-2246, kraines@huntington.org
Thea M. Page, 626-405-2260, tpage@huntington.org