CRIAS climate history exhibition
PAGES' Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies (CRIAS) working group proudly presents a new online art exhibition focusing on climate history.
Contemporary and historical climate change is beyond the scale of human perception. Meteorological extremes, such as droughts and floods, have generally left only indirect evidence in the material heritage of past societies. But scholars can combine instrumental data, proxy information, and written sources to reconstruct these patterns.
The exhibition, supported by the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), presents this legacy to a wider public on Google Arts & Culture and shows how skilfully historical societies adapted to past climate change.
Curated by Diana Feitsch and Martin Bauch, from the Institute's Department of Man and Environment, the exhibition is a labor of love.
"It has been a challenge to clarify rights from around the world and get images with a decent resolution in these pandemic times," Diana said, "with archives and libraries closed or hardly available for requests."
"Thanks to great feedback and help from the CRIAS community," Martin added, "we are happy to show how past climate change left impressive, at times surprising and – most of all – tangible traces in the cultural-historical heritage all over the world."
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Image credit: Detail of "Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters" by Hendrick Avercamp, c. 1608. Housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Object number: SK-A-1718. Click the image for the full, higher-resolution version or go to: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/SK-A-1718