LOCATION

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

DATES & TIMES

May 29, 2025 - March 8, 2026
12-5 p.m. Tuesday - Sunday

Installation view of Distant Early Warning, 2025 by Sharon Daniel

Weather and the Whale is a major exhibition project featuring immersive displays of original science research and newly commissioned contemporary artworks. Working at the intersections of art and science to connect people to the impacts of climate change, the project brings leading artists into collaboration with marine ecologists at the Friedlaender Lab at UC Santa Cruz

The title of the exhibition reflects the roles that both weather and whales take as indicators of climate change. Just as changing weather patterns indicate broader climate shifts, whale behaviors are also an indicator of a rapidly changing world. Presented across the three galleries and the screening room at the IAS, Weather and the Whale includes new research and data developed through two years of fieldwork by the Friedlaender Lab. This data, much made public for the first time, delves into the impacts on whales and other large marine mammals of environmental toxins, sea ice retreat, and other threats, including what is happening in Monterey Bay and along California’s coast.

For the internationally acclaimed artists in the exhibition, the research has provided a unique vantage point to creatively engage these and other ecological threats to whales and all their land-based counterparts. Video installations, sculptures, photography, and other artworks, most newly created for the exhibition, provide novel and experiential ways of seeing and understanding the human and nonhuman experiences of living in times of climate crisis– and to imagine global climate justice across land and ocean.

Artists:

Carolina Caycedo, Sharon Daniel, Ashley Hunt, Courtney Leonard, John Jota Leaños, Libia Posada, Mia Eve Rollow, Christine Howard Sandoval, Suné Woods and Whale Liberation Front (Imani Jacqueline Brown, Cory Diane, and Peter J. Bowling)

Scientists:

Natalia Botero Acosta, Ari Friedlaender, Chloe Lew and Logan Pallin

Weather and the Whale is curated by Ari Friedlaender, Alex Moore and Rachel Nelson with curatorial assistance provided by Mirra-Margarita Ianeva and LuLing Osofsky. Illustrations by Stephen Alford. It 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.

Header image: Carolina Caycedo, detail of When Whale looks at Human, 2025.