For Immediate Release

Contact: Adam Kubota, Press & Marketing Coordinator

(860) 685-2806 | akubota@wesleyan.edu
Images available on request

Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery Presents

Global Warning: Artists and

Climate Change
–
Group Exhibition at Wesleyan Explores Environmental Issues

Middletown, Conn., March 24, 2009-- Global Warning: Artists and Climate Change explores
pressing environmental issues through the lens of visual artists. Although a number of the artists
have collaborated or consulted with scientists and other experts, the aim of Global Warning is to
increase awareness of climate change through challenging, often evocative, content that is laced
with poetry and aesthetic power. Included in the exhibition are works by Marion Belanger, Nancy
Cohen, Lenore Malen, Eve Mosher, Katie Shelly, Frances Whitehead, and students from
Wesleyan University’s Architecture Research-Design-Build Studio taught by Elijah Huge.

The exhibition is curated by Nina Felshin, Zilkha Gallery’s Curator of Exhibitions, and organized
in conjunction with Feet to the Fire, Wesleyan University’s 18-month climate change initiative.

Global Warning: Artists and Climate Change runs from Tuesday, April 28 through Sunday, May
24, 2009. The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Friday, May 1 from 5–7pm,
with a curator’s talk at 5:30pm. Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, noon–4pm; Friday noon–8pm.
The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery is located at 283 Washington Terrace in Middletown,
Connecticut. For more information visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa or call 860-685-3355.

About the Exhibition

Chicago artist Frances Whitehead has formulated a new site-specific project entitled Wesleyan
University PhenoLilac. She proposes to “repurpose” the mature lilac bush just outside the gallery
as a phenologic observation point to measure long-range climate change.

Lenore Malen’s Harmony as a Hive consists of a traveling science museum and library located
within a large sculpture, whose structure mirrors the geometry of the beehive. The work examines
the ancient relationship of bees to human society in view of recent threats to the world’s bee
population by globalization and climate change.

Elijah Huge, assistant professor of art, is the guiding hand behind the collaborative project
SplitFrame, a site-specific and sustainable bird-viewing platform commissioned and built for a
nearby sanctuary in 2008. The project, represented in the exhibition by a model and
documentation, was conceived and executed by students in Professor Huge’s Architecture
Research-Design-Build Studio.
Eve Mosher is represented by a video and documentation of her 2007 interactive and
performance-based public artwork HighWaterLine on the New York City waterfront, which
created an immediate visual and local understanding of the effects of climate change.

Made of handmade paper, Nancy Cohen’s lyrical sculptural installation Estuary: Moods and
Modes is an evocation rather than a re-creation of her encounter with the vast quiet landscape of
the Mullica River and Great Bay Estuary in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

Marion Belanger’s Landfill, landscape photos printed on translucent fabric, was commissioned by
Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts and Environmental Studies program for the Feet to the Fire
Festival in 2008.

Bottled, by Wesleyan student Katie Shelly ’09, is a site specific installation that uses recycled
perfume bottles to comment on challenging personal and social questions raised by the
environmental movement and the activism that surrounds it.

Related Events:
Seeing Green: Artists Tackle Climate
Saturday, May 23, 2pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
This panel discussion examines how art that delivers challenging content with aesthetic power
can be a major force in raising public consciousness. Panelists include Wesleyan Assistant
Professor of Art Elijah Huge, and Global Warning artists Lenore Malen and Eve Mosher. Nina
Felshin will moderate the panel. It is free and open to the public.

About the Feet to the Fire project at Wesleyan

Feet to the Fire: Exploring Global Climate Change from Science to Art, is an eighteen-month
project which includes: research opportunities for a team of students and faculty to explore first-
hand the effects of global warming, fieldwork studies in art and science, performances,
pedagogical exchanges in existing courses, commissioning of artists, and convening of experts.
The project is funded in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters
Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation. It is one of only eight grants given to challenge campus-based performing arts
presenters to integrate their programs more organically within the academic environment. Visit
http://www.wesleyan.edu/feettothefire for more information about the project.

About the CFA

The Center for the Arts is an 11-building complex on the Wesleyan campus that houses the
departments of art and art history, music, theater and dance as well as film studies events and
classes. The CFA includes the 400-seat Theater, the 260-seat Cinema, World Music Hall (a non-
Western performance space), the 414-seat Crowell Concert Hall and the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha
Gallery.