The National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C, is at the moment that includes images by Subhankar Banerjee, professor of artwork and founder and director of The University of New Mexico’s Center for Environmental Arts & Humanities, within the Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography exhibit.
Professor of Art and Ecology Subhankar Banerjee
The exhibit options 150 images by greater than 100 artists. The images inform a narrative spanning almost 200 years of useful resource extraction historical past by way of American images and study how photographers have approached the problem of capturing the numerous but usually hidden processes and impacts related to mining the planet’s assets, comparable to minerals, coal and fossil fuels.
“To have two photographs acquired by the National Gallery of Art for its permanent collection, and then to have one placed on display, I consider this the highest accomplishment of my life as an American artist to date,” stated Banerjee. “It is very special to have work permanently acquired by the NGA, because unlike other art museums, the NGA will never deaccession it.”
Banerjee’s piece, which is a large-scale {photograph} titled Caribou Track on Coal Seams II (2006), is on show within the set up’s Now gallery.
Beneath the Surface additionally contains images by Will Wilson (Diné), an UNM MFA images alumnus, and {a photograph} by the late UNM Professor of Photography Patrick Nagatani. Both artists’ works are featured within the Environmental Concerns gallery.
The exhibition is about to tour three galleries throughout the nation. After opening on the National Gallery of Art, it can transfer to the Milwaukee Art Museum from Oct. 23, 2026, to Jan. 18, 2027, after which to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art from Feb. 14 to May 9, 2027.
“By traveling the exhibition across the nation, the National Gallery of Art is making this expansive exhibition and its timely message accessible to people in two regions, hopefully inspiring those communities to take note and organize their own exhibits that showcase the human-caused climate and biodiversity crises,” Banerjee stated.
Banerjee is a multi-talented artwork school member who makes a speciality of images and writing; he’s additionally a curator and a longtime environmental historian. He has targeted his creativity, analysis, and curatorial efforts on biodiversity and the local weather disaster.
In this gentle, one in all his extra noteworthy contributions was founding and directing UNM’s Center for Environmental Arts & Humanities, the place he and his colleagues concentrate on sharing and fostering research-based artistic practices to point out the world the organic extinction and local weather crises and to impact change in these areas.
His images have been exhibited in additional than fifty museum exhibitions around the globe. A couple of embody Seasons of Life and Land, which was on show at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (the place it was censored), in addition to on the American Museum of Natural History, California Academy of Sciences, and different venues between 2003 and 2005. His piece, Resource Wars, was on show on the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.
Currently, a collection of Banerjee’s Arctic and New Mexico desert images is on show at three different museums. He is featured in UNM’s Art Museum’s opening exhibit, Abundance: New Acquisitions from 2016-2026, NMSU’s Mapping Spaces: Selections from the Lannan Art Collection at NMSU and the Oklahoma City Art Museum’s exhibit Abstract Photography.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago just lately acquired 5 of his large-scale Arctic images.
Visit the Beneath the Surface exhibit webpage to study extra about this images exploration.
To study extra about Professor Subhankar Banerjee’s work, visit his faculty profile webpage.