U. Maryland opens ‘Black & Indigenous’ art gallery to address ‘climate anxiety’
By Jenna Mulhern – Furman University
Outside scholars say gallery may perpetuate ‘extreme and inaccurate messages‘ about environment
A “Black & Indigenous environmental art gallery” recently opened at the University of Maryland, aiming to support students’ “climate anxiety” and other “stresses” of studying “environmental injustice and environmental racism.”
The CEDAR Gallery stands for “Centers Ecologies, Diasporas, and Ancestral Roots.” It showcases “environmental works and teaching at UMD, Maryland, and around the globe,” according to its website.
The gallery, which opened earlier this year, also aims to introduce students “to interdisciplinary and environmental-related art, activism, and scholarship.”
History Professor Jayson Porter is the principal curator and director of the gallery. According to his university bio, he specializes in “environmental justice history, science and technologies studies of race and resistance, and Afro-Indigenous ecologies in Latin America.”
Earlier this fall, Porter posted about a fundraiser for the gallery on X, stating that it will help support “a space that uplifts Black and Indigenous environmental art.”
Porter did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The College Fix via email over the past several weeks, asking about the purpose of the gallery and the reasons for starting it.
The gallery displays “environmental justice art” and hosts events such as the “Black and Indigenous Ecologies and Futures Panel.”
The event panel consisted of “two geographers of Black ecologies, a lawyer of Black placemaking, and an Indigenous farmer.” The discussion revolved around “the past, present, and future of Black and Indigenous environmental relations in the United States and Brazil.” It focused on themes like “food sovereignty, land reform and access, archival methods and silences.”
The gallery’s website also provides resources to help students facing “climate and environmental anxieties.” Because UMD is a publicly funded institution, taxpayer money supports the gallery, its events, and the resources it offers.
But the project has drawn criticism from scholars outside the university who questioned both its framing and its approach to climate change.
“Climate change science itself has suffered from politicization,” Jessica Weinkle told The College Fix in an interview last week. She added that “misrepresentations of scientific knowledge, in this case climate change science, have far-reaching impacts on distant disciplines such as psychology, art, and history – and culture more generally.”
Weinkle is an associate professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her current research focuses on climate science and conflicts of interest, regulatory capture, and state-level science advice.
“Anything clearly labeled as art deserves all the leniencies reserved for freedom of speech,” Weinkle said, emphasizing that creative expression should not be censored. However, she added that “for a long time now, the media has favored extreme and inaccurate messages about climate change.”
According to Weinkle, the “poor job” the media has done on “reflecting the state of scientific knowledge about climate change” has negatively affected the public.
“‘Climate anxiety’ to the extent that it is real in the public is a product of climate change messaging, not anyone’s actual experience of changing trends in the statistics of climate metrics,” Weinkle said.
To enhance the positive impact of projects like the Cedar Gallery, she recommended introspection of “society’s current relationship with science and higher education to stimulate open discussion about ways forward.”
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, expressed a similar concern that the UMD project “presents only one side of the environmental issue.”
She said the gallery focuses on climate damage alone, but leaves out “the role fossil fuels have played in human progress and the positive environmental trends that also deserve attention.”
While the Cedar Gallery offers an opportunity for more education, which Furchtgott-Roth noted is important, she feels there are potential limitations.
“A university art and history gallery should primarily serve an educational purpose, and the current presentation doesn’t encourage students to evaluate both sides for themselves,” she told The Fix in a recent email.
Chris Talgo, editorial director of the Heartland Institute, also highlighted the importance of art and cultural exhibits promoting “critical thinking, not group thinking.” The institute is a conservative thinktank that focuses on environmental issues and challenges popular claims about climate change.
