LOCATION

Institute of the Arts and Sciences
100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, CA
P (831) 502-7252
Email ias@ucsc.edu

DATES & TIMES

May 23, 2025 - March 8, 2026
12-5 p.m. Tuesday - Sunday

Weather & the Whale takes whale histories and migration routes as a starting point and provocation through which to promote climate resilience and justice in our communities. The histories of commercial whaling point to colonialism and capitalism as inextricable from climate change and species extinctions, while also exposing rifts between conservationist and Indigenous approaches to environmental stewardship. The seasonal movement of whales across international borders highlights the ineffectiveness of approaching climate policy and species protection from nationalist perspectives and invites imagining place and belonging from a perspective of mobility. Bringing artists and scientists together around the questions raised through these tensions, this collaboration travels across land and ocean, art and science, humans and other mammals, to examine multiple experiences of vulnerability in the face of climate change. 

The exhibition is the culmination of a two-year collaboration between the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Friedlaender Lab at UC Santa Cruz. Over the preceding months a team of artists, marine scientists, and scholars have been in regular conversation, sharing work and research updates. The exhibition includes eight newly commissioned artworks created in response to these ongoing conversations alongside a small selection of loaned artworks and historical objects that address the exhibition’s themes of migration, Indigenous sovereignty, histories of capital, and bodily vulnerability. The exhibition also features new marine mammal research analyzing critical climate issues such as sea ice retreat and increasing underwater noise pollution, the prevalence of toxins in different marine mammal species, and the threats of industrial shipping to whale migration.

Artists:

Imani Jacqueline Brown, Carolina Caycedo, Sharon Daniel, Ashley Hunt, Courtney Leonard, John Jota Leoñas, Libia Posada, Mia Eve Rollow, Christine Howard Sandoval, Sam Williams, Suné Woods

This exhibition is organized as part of An Aesthetics of Resilience and funded by a University of California Office of the President California Climate Action Seed Grant, with additional support from the Coha Nowark Art + Science Fund.

Image: Weather & the Whale, Stephen Alford.