Art and the Environment
A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 88
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue invites submissions that explore the relationship between art and the environment. Informed by the last three decades of ecocritical humanities scholarship, it takes seriously the role of art and art history in shaping the values, beliefs, and practices behind the planetary environmental crisis. It asserts that the humanities have a crucial role in unmasking corrupt ideologies, informing our relationships to the environment, and communicating better understandings of our relationship to the planet. In terms of time frame, it considers both contemporary global artists whose practices engage environmental politics, as well as art historical investigations of the ecological stakes of older artworks found in museums or other collections. It asks how an ecological lens helps us understand new connections between the art of the present and the past and how an ecocritical art history might provide insights into the history of art unavailable to traditional formal or social historical approaches. This Special Issue asks how art might make the ecological processes visible and legible to publics and audiences that are not necessarily part of an “art world.”
We encourage manuscripts focused on any region of the planet that challenge the perceived autonomy of art or aesthetics from diverse ecological and social contexts. Submissions might focus on an individual artist’s work in its particular time and place, considering the way it affirmed, questioned, or expressed doubts with regard to the dominant environmental practices of its time. Others might consider the ecological stakes of a broader art movement, style, or medium/technology from any place or time. Still others might reevaluate art history or museum practice from a post-humanist standpoint, considering what constitutes an “ecocritical” art history when “the human” and “the artistic” are no longer considered separable from ecological processes.
Dr. Mark Watson
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- art and the environment
- ecocritical art
- art history
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