Environmental Art

The Environmental Art Department at the Schuylkill Center incites curiosity and sparks awareness of the natural environment through art, and works collaboratively to create exhibitions of the highest quality that attract, educate and inspire the public.

Created in 2000, the department complements the Schuylkill Center’s two mission-driven objectives: land preservation and environmental education. This unique interpretive program offers an alternative to both traditional art venues and formal methods of presenting environmental education to the public. The program challenges established and emerging artists to reflect on environmental issues; to consider the natural context in which the artwork is being created; and to explore working with new and non-traditional materials.

Through partnerships with other arts and educational organizations, environmental art at the Schuylkill Center also provides professional opportunities for artists, interpretive programs for the public and arts-in-education programs for students.
The art department collaborated with the education department to create our new Environmental Art Education classes for visiting school groups. Using art as a tool to understand nature, and nature as a framework to understand the elements of art, these classes offer a fun, innovative and effective paradigm for studying the natural world and visual language.

Looking ahead, the department will broaden its scope of activity to include conservation.  We are exploring an innovative art practice known as “ecovention," where artists collaborate with scientists to interact directly with the ecosystem. Projects such as habitat creation, remedial plantings, or water-control structures will expand the boundaries of traditional art and maintain the balance of our eco-system. 

Artists working in this way (Patricia Johansen, Buster Simpson, Lillian Ball, Stacy Levy--to name just a few), traditionally learn on their own, finding their teams themselves and working wherever the projects take them. Most were not trained in this practice, but created methods that allow for a new way of creating sustainability.  Since this approach is different from what is commonly understood as “art,” it’s difficult to find institutions who teach it, or venues to see it. It is a growing movement in art: to make, as Buster Simpson calls it, “work that works.”

But what if there was somewhere to learn about this sort of work? What if an institution could bring artists together with scientists, naturalists, ecologists and biologists, and find innovative solutions to ongoing environmental pressures that threaten the natural world?

Given our unique assets, the Schuylkill Center can serve as a laboratory for scientists, artists and the public to investigate ecological sustainability.  As an educational institution, the Center would seek out projects that engage the public not only as audience members, but as participants in the creation and maintenance of the work. It is our hope that this collaboration would result in tangible, lasting solutions that serve as prototypes for larger projects installed far and wide.

The only one of its kind in Philadelphia, the Environmental Art Department presents its activities through two interrelated program areas:

1.  The Exhibition program is the only art venue in the Philadelphia area which presents exclusively site-specific environmental installations. Artists create and install work on-site in an environmental context, directly informed and inspired by the surroundings.


• Outdoor installations are created in two locations: On the Trails and Second Site: Brolo Hill Farm. Both locations invite artists to consider environmental issues and the physical characteristics of the land as they conceptualize their work, which is installed on the Center's public trails.


• The Welcome Gallery, located in the main building just past the reception desk, is home to indoor exhibitions curated by the Schuylkill Center Art Department Director or by visiting curators or organizations. The Gallery’s curatorial concepts explore and reflect on environmental themes that relate to local ecologies, or to the Schuylkill Center itself.   Four to five exhibits are presented each year and include works created in all media.  An exhibition statement accompanies the artwork and provides interpretive information about the exhibition and its connection to environmental issues.


2.  The Schuylkill Center’s Artist-in-Residence Program supports art projects and activities that engage school groups and the community. Moving forward, we hope to focus these residencies on remedial or preservative work, likely done in collaboration with scientists and school groups.

You can learn more about environmental art by visiting our resources page