Library of Art Images on Key Topics

> Return to BIO Curriculum Step 1

 

Title: Painting "Kansas Farming" at U.S. Courthouse, Wichita, KansasClick on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Richard Haines
  • Year: 1936
  • Topic Keyword(s): Climate Change, Weather & Climate
  • Description: Oil painting measuring 4' 8" x 10' 6". This mural, commissioned by the US Dept. of Treasury's post office mural project, depicts various aspects of rural life and farm production, focusing on the importance of urbanization, industrialization, and technology to the economic growth of the region. Rolling hills ripe with the bounty of the fall harvest comprise the idealized rural landscape.
  • Related Lessons/Units: Human Impacts on the Environment: Water Management in the Colorado River Basin
  • Related Data:
    Population Density
    Dams and Reservoirs
    Crop Land
    Pasture Land
  • Usage Rights: No known restriction
  • Photographed by Carol M. Highsmith (2002) -Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Source/Link to Source: Library of Congress

Title: The Coit Tower Mural (left panel)

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Maxine Albro

Title: Aviary

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Alexis Rockman
  • Year: 1992
  • Topic Keyword(s): Biodiversity, Climate, Ecology, Genetic Mutations
  • Description: Alexis Rockman, American, born 1962, Aviary, 1992. Oil on wood. 203.2 x 172.7 cm (80 x 68 in.) Private Collection.
  • Related Lessons/Units: Link(s) to lessons/units where artwork is featured
  • Related Data: Link(s) to data tagged with the same topics
  • Usage Rights: With special permission for this project from the artist, Alexis Rockman.

Source/Link to Source: Princeton University Art Museum

Title: Watershed

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Honoring the Future

Title: Lake Squam from Red Hill

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1833–1905 Newport, Rhode Island)
  • Year: 1874
  • Topic Keyword(s): Climate Change, Weather & Climate
  • Description: Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on light gray-green wove paper. The view of island-studded Lake Squam from Red Hill in New Hampshire was a well-worn tourist staple by the time Richards executed this radiant prospect at sunset. The picture hints at his admiration for the sky spectacles in oil of New York landscape painter Frederic Church.
  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data:
  • Usage Rights: Public Domain Image

Source/Link to Source: Lake Squam from Red Hill

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Artist: George Steinmetz Photographer
Year: published on Jan. 21, 2024
Topic Keyword(s): Climate Change, Weather & Climate
“As Switzerland’s Glaciers Shrink, a Way of Life May Melt Away,”
Graduate students from ETH Zurich using orange dye to track and measure surface melt at the Rhône Glacier, which has retreated about half a kilometer since 2007.
Related Lessons/Units
Related Data:
Usage Rights: Public Domain Image
Source/Link to Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-picture-feb-26-2024.html

Title: Ethiopia during drought

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Oxfam East Africa

Adrien Van Utrecht. 1599-1652. Utrecht. ,Le Banquet. 1644. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Artist: Adriaen van Utrecht, Pronkstilleven,
Year: 1644
Topic Keyword(s):food
Description: oil painting of a sumptuous still life depicting an excess of delicacies.
Waste is implied. Some of the foods were like the lobsters were being depleted at this time through excess of consumption. The poorly paid labor of the lower class which made this excess possible is a hidden factor.
Related Lessons/Units:
Related Data:
Usage Rights: Public Domain Image
Source/Link to Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dutch-banquet-scenes/

Title: Drought

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: National Gallery of Art

Title: Dust Bowl Survivors

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Alexandre Hogue
  • Year: 1936
  • Topic Keyword(s): Human Activity & Impacts, Weather & Climate
  • Description: Oil on canvas, Musée de la cooperation franco-américan, Blérancourt, France. Drought Survivors confronts the viewer with a tractor buried in sand, barbed wires which no longer enclose anything, a dead tree under a sky without cloud. The human beings have also disappeared. The only ones alive are a prairie dog and a rattlesnake. Art historian Lea Rossen DeLong points out the irony of these “survivors.” The prairie dog and the rattlesnake “were exactly the two creatures most despised by the farmers trying to cultivate the plains.” (De Long, quoted by Hartviksen, 2015, p. 21).
  • Related Lessons/Units: Drought: Examining the Causes and Effects of Precipitation Shortage
  • Related Data: 
    Drought Intensity
    Freshwater Withdrawals
    Statewide Maximum Temperature Ranks
    Statewide Precipitation Ranks
  • Usage Rights: Public Domain

Source/Link to Source: Arthur Digital Museum

Title: Drought

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Missouri Remembers

Title: Filming swabbing bats, collecting air samples

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Creative Commons

Title: By measuring the area of clustered bats, biologists estimate the numbers of hibernating bats.

Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) survey in Ray's Cave, 2007.

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Public domain

Title: Aurora Borealis

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Frederic Edwin Church
  • Year: 1865
  • Topic Keyword(s): E.g., Earth & the Solar System, Earth Systems
  • Description: Frederic Edwin Church, Aurora Borealis, 1865, oil on canvas, 56 x 83 1/2 in. (142.3 x 212.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Eleanor Blodgett, 1911.4.1
  • Related Lessons/Units: Link(s) to lessons/units where artwork is featured
  • Related Data: Link(s) to data tagged with the same topics
  • Usage Rights: Creative Commons 0 (Free to Use)

Source/Link to Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Title: Helicopter Hands

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Rolland Golden
  • Year: 2008
  • Topic Keyword(s): Human Activity & Impacts, Weather & Climate
  • Description: “Helicopter Hands,” acrylic painting, The Historic New Orleans Collection, acquisition made possible by the Diana Helis Henry Art Fund of The Helis Foundation; joint ownership with the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Fund, 2008.0109.8. A man stands in the doorway of his flooded home; its window is broken and a blue shutter hangs askew from its hinges. The shadows of upraised hands and arms appear on his home, as though rising from the water. Shards of glass frame the scene, as though the viewer is looking through a broken window.
  • Related Lessons/Units: Earth's Changing Atmosphere: Human Impacts and Climate Change
  • Related Data:
    Temperature Anomaly (July 2023)
    Nightime Lights
    Hurricane Tracks
    Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly
  • Usage Rights: Permission for image use given for this project by The Historic New Orleans Collection
  • Source/Link to Source: The Historic New Orleans Collection

Title: A  Solar Eclipse seen from Earth's Moon

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: W. Kranz
  • Year: 1898
  • Topic Keyword(s): E.g., Earth & the Solar System, Earth Systems, Eclipse
  • Description: A  Solar Eclipse seen from Earth's Moon by W. Kranz in "The Cosmic System: Astronomy for Everyone" by M. Wilhelm Meyer (1898)
  • Related Lessons/Units: Link(s) to lessons/units where artwork is featured
  • Related Data: Link(s) to data tagged with the same topics
  • Usage Rights: Public Domain

 

Title: The Great Comet of 1680 Over Rotterdam (Staartster (komeet) boven Rotterdam)

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Lieve Verschuier
  • Year: 1680
  • Topic Keyword(s): E.g., Earth & the Solar System, Earth Systems, Comet
  • Description: Lieve Verschuier, Staartster (komeet) boven Rotterdam, 1680, oil on panel,  10 x 12.7 in. (25.5 cm x 32.5 cm), Museum Rotterdam, 11028-A-B
  • Related Lessons/Units: Link(s) to lessons/units where artwork is featured
  • Related Data: Link(s) to data tagged with the same topics
  • Usage Rights: Creative Commons 0 (Free to Use)

Source/Link to Source: Museum Rotterdam

Title: The Eruption of Vesuvius

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Title: The Healing Walk

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Ben Powless

Artist: photographer John H. White
Year: 1973-74
Topic Keyword(s): density, human impact, energy,
Description:.
MONROE STREET PARKING LOT IN CHICAGO HOLDS 2,700 CARS FOR COMMUTERS AT LAKE SHORE DRIVE. NEW CONSTRUCTION IS UNDERWAY TO ADD 900 SPACES TO HOLD A TOTAL OF 3,600 VEHICLES. A NEW PARK ALSO WILL BE CREATED DURING CONSTRUCTION
Related Lessons/Units:
Related Data:
Usage Rights: Public Domain Image
Source/Link to Source: https://pdimagearchive.org/images/0d6220b9-e528-4630-b2c3-d87cee098fdf/

Title:  Cliff Dwellers

  • Artist:  George Bellows, American, (1882-1925), Ashcan School painter
  • Year:  1913
  • Topic Keyword:  Population/People/Human Impact
  • Description:  The early twentieth century witnessed the transformation of the United States into a modern industrialized society and an international political power.  By 1920 more than half of the country’s population lived in urban areas. Seeming to guarantee employment, the cities lured many farmers and African Americans from rural areas. In addition, between 1900 and 1920, 14.5 million immigrants from Europe, Russia, Mexico, and Asia settled here, primarily in urban centers. A new energy was channeled to such cities as New York and Chicago, as massive skyscrapers were erected to furnish much-needed office space and living quarters.  The Ashcan School painters captured the harsh realities of life in the city including poverty, the immigrant experience, and the city's gritty streets.
  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data:
  • Usage Rights:  Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 

Title: Boats in Mousehole harbour Cornwall England

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

Source/Link to Source: Shutterstock

Title: Budapest, Hungary-August 09, 2018

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Photographer: Andocs
  • Year: 2018
  • Topic Keyword(s): Heat, Climate Change
  • Description: Unidentified people alleviate the summer heat wave in front of the water spraying fan at the street of downtown.
  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data:
  • Usage Rights: Royalty-free
  • Source/Link to Source: Shutterstock Image

Title: The Menemsha Hurricane

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: Thomas Hart Benton
  • Year: 1954
  • Topic Keyword(s): Hurricane
  • Description:  Martha’s Vineyard was hit by two hurricanes in 1954. The first was Hurricane Carol, which hit without warning on August 30th with winds that gusted to 90 miles-an-hour, causing extraordinary devastation, and leaving Dutcher Dock in Menemsha piled high with the wreckage of yachts and fishing boats. The second was Hurricane Edna, which hit ten days later, on September 11, with winds that gusted to 110 miles-an-hour, but which did less damage than Carol since this time there was ample warning that the storm was coming and it hit at low tide.
  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data:
  • Usage Rights: Public Domain
  • Source/Link to Source: 

Title: Tornado Over Kansas

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

By John Steuart Curry - https://muskegonartmuseum.org/mma-permanent-collection/ (original version) https://www.1000museums.com/shop/art/john-steuart-curry-tornado-over-kansas/ (higher resolution version), Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67986883

Title: The Line Storm

Click on the image to open a full screen lightbox that can be copied to your desktop.

  • Artist: John Steuart Curry
  • Year: 1935
  • Topic Keyword(s): Tornado
  • Description:  Oil on panel.
  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data:
  • Usage Rights: John Steuart Curry, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Howard, NY in 1939; Babcock Galleries, NY in 1998
  • Source/Link to Source:

Title:  Storm in the Mountains

Storm in the Mountains

  • Artist:  Frederic Edwin Church, American (1826-1900)
  • Year:  1847
  • Topic Keyword:  Weather/Lightning
  • Description:  oil painting

Dominating this composition is a lightning-blasted tree embodying nature's awe-inspiring power and endless cycle of life and death. A popular motif because of these associations, the blasted tree was favored by many landscape painters like Church, who prominently featured it here.

  • Related Lessons/Units:
  • Related Data: 

·      Usage Rights:  Collection of the Cleveland Art Museum