Venue
The Huntington's Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center, Haaga Hall
1151 Oxford Rd.
San Marino, CA 91108
The Geological Imagination in the Long Nineteenth Century
Saturday, April 05, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Cost: $35.00
Sponsor: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
For more information call: 626-405-3432
Or click here: https://huntington.org/event/geological-imagination-long-nineteenth-century
Exploring the historical origins of extraction and the growing field of Geoaesthetics, this conference queries how artists mined the geological imagination during this period. Presentations will respond to the cultural aftershocks of the birth of modern geology and paleontology, which instituted a major conceptual shift in understanding nature. Over the last decade, there has been a surge of interest in geology and its attendant fields – such as stratigraphy, paleontology, and geomorphology – in the arts and humanities, catalyzed by the notion that we have entered a new geological epoch. This “geological turn” in the academy did not originate with the recent public awareness of anthropogenic climate change. During the long nineteenth century, artists, creative writers, and historians were already intensely preoccupied with the deep material history of the earth. This 2-day conference will chart the multifaceted ways in which the geological imagination can be traced across a variety of artistic outlets, from the ascent of a landscape tradition that was interested in the antiquity of the natural world, to the rise of reproductive technologies and new artist materials predicated on industrial extraction. Funding provided by Anonymous. For questions about this event, please email researchconference@huntington.org or call (626) 405-3432.
