Methods for Ecocritical Art History

Why It Matters

By providing concrete eco‑critical tools, the book empowers art historians to address climate urgency, diversify scholarship, and reshape the discipline’s ethical and methodological foundations.

Key Takeaways

• Eco-critical art history now embraces global case studies.
• Book offers tools to integrate ecology into art historical methodology.
• All art considered ecological, revealing human‑nature interdependencies within contexts.
• Interdisciplinary dialogue with science, politics, and justice essential.
• Movement challenges discipline’s privilege and entrenched anthropocentric biases.

Summary

Good evening attendees gathered to celebrate the launch of Methods for Eco‑critical Art History, edited by Olga Smith and Andrew Patritio, under the auspices of the CLD Art Ecologies Infrastructure Research Cluster. The event introduced the volume as a practical guide that equips scholars with exemplars and methodological tools to embed ecological thinking into art‑historical research.

The speakers highlighted how eco‑critical art history has moved beyond traditional landscape and land‑art studies to a universal framework where, as Alan C. Rick defines, “ecoitical interpretation engages ecology as a constitutive element of artistic practice regardless of place, period, medium, maker, or message.” The book showcases global case studies, demonstrates close‑looking visual analysis, and stresses interdisciplinary collaboration with environmental science, political ecology, and justice‑oriented fields.

Memorable remarks included Olga’s assertion that “All art is ecological,” Andrew’s self‑described “unfounded optimism” balanced by Olga’s “well‑founded pessimism,” and Lucy Brack’s call to confront the discipline’s historic privilege and anthropocentrism. The launch also announced a 30% discount code and a touring schedule of talks at institutions such as UC Davis and the Association for Art History in Cambridge.

The volume positions eco‑critical methods as an urgent response to the ecological crisis, offering art historians a means to reinterpret visual culture through a post‑human lens, challenge entrenched hierarchies, and forge productive partnerships across the humanities and sciences. Its adoption could reshape curricula, research agendas, and public engagement with art in the era of climate change.

Original Description

Marking the publication of Methods for Ecocritical Art History, edited by Olga Smith and Andrew Patrizio, this panel explores what an ecocritical approach can offer art historians, and what the interdisciplinary project of ecocriticism stands to gain from art historians, their methods and practices.

Organised as part of the Research Cluster Art, Ecologies, Infrastructures, led by Lucy Bradnock and Wenny Teo.

Speakers:

Lucy Bradnock (chair) is Reader of Modern and Contemporary art and Dean for Research at the Courtauld, where she leads the MA special option American Art in the Age of Ecology, and is also editor of the journal Art History.

Charlotte Klonk is Professor of Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. She has held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.

Andrew Patrizio is Professor of Scottish Visual Culture at the University of Edinburgh. His work, in two main areas – Scottish art since 1945, and on art, ecology and the environment – is informed by close engagement with art practice, from collaboration, commissioning and writing.

Olga Smith is a NUAcT Fellow in Fine Art at Newcastle University. International trajectory of her research spans topics such as ecocriticism and landscape, interchanges between art and intellectual ideas, transnational identity, and histories of photography.