At Arkansas Outside, we live at the intersection of conservation, nature, and outdoor recreation—where protecting the natural world goes hand in hand with enjoying it. Whether it’s trails carved through the Ozarks, paddling routes on wild rivers, or efforts to preserve public lands, we believe that meaningful recreation depends on a healthy environment. That’s why we pay close attention when the arts step in to tell the story of our evolving relationship with the natural world, like in the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts’ newest exhibition, The Long View: From Conservation to Sustainability.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) will unveil a new exhibition, The Long View: From Conservation to Sustainability, on June 13, 2025. Presented by Bank of America, the exhibition will be on display through August 31, 2025, in the Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries.
“The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts has been a mainstay of Arkansas’s cultural landscape for decades, and we are thrilled to share this unique exhibit from our collection with AMFA and its guests,” says Heather Jones, President of Bank of America Arkansas.
AMFA and Bank of America believe in the importance of making the arts more accessible in our communities. The Long View exhibition at AMFA is made available through the Bank of America Art in our Communities® program, which loans fully curated exhibitions from the Bank of America collection to museums and nonprofit galleries around the world.
“Our partnership with Bank of America for The Long View is a natural extension of the Museum’s existing relationship,” states Dr. Victoria Ramirez, AMFA’s Executive Director. “We are proud to be longtime beneficiaries of their support and look forward to seeing our guests’ response to this exciting new exhibition.”
The Long View features photographs, paintings, prints, and sculptures by artists who use their art to advocate for the conservation and protection of the planet. Spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, the work in the exhibition charts the evolution of how modern society thinks about and interacts with nature.
Organized into four thematic sections, the exhibition explores “The Beginnings of Conservation,” with late nineteenth and early twentieth-century artists like John James Audubon and Carleton Watkins, whose revelatory works influenced the founding of the Audubon Society and the National Park Service, respectively.
Moving into the early twentieth century, “Push and Pull—Industry and Environment” includes art by Regionalist artists Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood alongside Arthur Rothstein’s iconic Dust Bowl images exploring the impact of unsustainable farming practices.
“The Emergence of Conservation Activism” focuses on postwar works and the emerging social and political focus on ecology during the late 1960s and 1970s. This section includes Robert Rauschenberg’s design for the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, and Michael Heizer’s innovative prints using plates made from recycled scrap metal waste.
Finally, “Working Towards a Sustainable Vision” highlights contemporary artists Aurora Robson and John Sabraw, who repurpose pollutants such as plastic debris and acid mine drainage from the landscape as their materials, alongside other artists who emphasize the need to safeguard our planet in the face of its radical and continuing transformation.
“In blending the contemporary with the historical, this exhibition opens new dialogues by prompting us to examine what has changed and what has stayed the same,” shares AMFA Curator Jennifer Jankauskas. “These artists, both individually and as a group, have created a road map for how we should look at the environment and what we can do to continue to conserve it.”
Admission to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is free. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit arkmfa.org.
Lead photo: Richard Misrach (Los Angeles, California, 1949 – ), Battleground Point #21, 1999, chromogenic dye coupler print on paper, 28 x 32 in. On loan from the Bank of America Collection.
Images for this article were provided by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
This article was originally published on ArkansasOutside.com, your trusted source for outdoor news and updates in The Natural State. Unless otherwise credited, all photos included in this piece are the property of Arkansas Outside, LLC. We take pride in sharing the beauty and adventures of Arkansas through our lens—thank you for supporting our work!
