Tending the Garden

I was initially skeptical of the press release I received for In Praise of Caves, the Noguchi Museum’s latest exhibition. “As the climate crisis accelerates, along with other terrifying signs that we have fundamentally and perhaps irreparably broken our relationship with nature,” it read, “these artists’ visions have never been more relevant.” Grandiose claims are typical of press releases, but this one hit a nerve. As the climate crisis accelerates, it has seemed to me that art exhibitions are losing, rather than gaining, relevance; that meditating on beauty and abstractions in the midst of disaster is as absurd as tending to your garden while your house is on fire.

I’ve been in this state of mind for a long time, leaden with premature grief for everything that has ever excited me about being alive. Though it’s…