Ecocriticism on the Wall: Roman Landscapes at the San Antonio Museum of Art

The recent exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art, Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, brought together a range of works produced between roughly 100 BCE and 200 CE and found in the areas of Rome and the Bay of Naples. This beautifully curated exhibit, as well as the accompanying catalogue, scrutinized and problematized categories like the bucolic, the real versus the mythic, and the meaning of “landscape” itself. It took a deliberately expansive approach to the latter by featuring images diverse in their subject, style, medium, and context, constituting the first instance in which these objects were grouped together in a museum space as part of a broader generic category. With its progression from tranquil scenes of country life, to the dangerous landscapes of myth, to the imagery of tombs and of death itself, the exhibition offered visitors much to reflect on regarding the ways in which humans invent, interact with, harm, and are harmed by the natural environment. Its strong ecocritical framing made this exhibition particularly relevant for current scholarly directions in the field of Roman art, while at the same time centering and historicizing a vital contemporary anxiety.