Skip to main content

Staten Island Museum opens new exhibition Vulnerable Landscapes on Earth Day

For Immediate Release

Opens April 22, 2023

(Staten Island, NY – March 23, 2023) – Today the Staten Island Museum announced its next exhibition, Vulnerable Landscapes, an interdisciplinary exhibition that centers the shorelines at the forefront of climate change in one of New York City’s most vulnerable landscapes: Staten Island.

Poised to open to the public on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22 the exhibition explores Staten Island’s unique challenges due to its geography and history, with industry and community concentrated where water meets ground.

Vulnerable Landscapes circumnavigates Staten Island illuminating the past to shed light on the future.

Painting of a girl standing in front of a sea-scape wearing a white shirt and holding her hands to her chest

Idea Viola Reid – Climate Justice Advocate
Sarah Yuster (b. 1957, American)
Oil on canvas, 2023
Part of the series Biophiles – A New Generation

“This exciting exhibition brings together an invited group of artists, students, engineers, educators, scientists, advocates, and landscape architects to create an inspiring and illuminating gallery experience. It communicates what is uniquely Staten Island and yet globally relevant, highlighting the individuals documenting, working with, rebuilding, reimagining, and advocating for this island,” says Rylee Eterginoso, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs, and curator of the exhibition. “We are excited to put objects from the museum’s collection in conversation with new works of contemporary art, as well as projects rooted in community science and innovation – connecting visitors to what is truly special, and at risk.”

In Vulnerable Landscapes, concepts of resistance, change, and recovery are investigated and reimagined through contemporary art supported by objects and archival materials from the Museum’s collection.

The exhibition will feature the work of: Billion Oyster Project, James Vincent Brice, Nate Dorr, Edrex Fontanilla and Sarah Nelson Wright, Nataki Hewling, HERShot students: Alexandria Anderson, Madison Davis, Savannah Washington, Soojin Yoonsmith), Nathan Kensinger, Living Breakwaters: SCAPE, Michael McWeeney, Beryl Thurman, and Sarah Yuster.

On View April 22 – December 30, 2023

Public Opening: EARTH DAY! Saturday, April 22, 2:00pm – 4:00pm

Celebrate Earth Day at the Museum with the opening of Vulnerable Landscapes as well as crafts and activities for all ages. Enjoy free seedlings from the NYC Native Plant Center (supplies are limited), try your hand at charcoal landscape drawing with Freshkills Park, make plantable seedpaper, examine habitat loss over millennia with a mastodon fossil dig, and more. Sponsored by National Grid.