The Ecological Turn in Art Is Here to Stay

In 2018, art institutions began exhibiting shows on ecology and climate change. As with every turn, it risked being taken as just another intellectual trend.

When audiences entered the so-called Oval Gallery at Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in October 2018, the only thing they could see was an inexplicable expanse of garbage. With the inner ellipse of the space apparently filled with litter, it would take visitors a slow, painstaking descent along its enveloping ramp to finally realize that this awful amount of trash was suspended as a Damocles sword over a roughly 2,600-square-foot void (800 square meters). Entering this void, on the other hand, felt like walking into the sea, with rays of light streaming down through

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