Working independently, award-winning nature photographer Stephen Gorman and beloved New Yorker artist Edward Koren respond to the consequences of destabilizing our natural environment and speak to their alarm about the global climate crisis. The artists have come together to express their two very different — but mutually reinforcing — visions. The exhibition centers on the uncanny synergy between Gorman’s wildlife and landscape photographs, and Koren’s drawings, lithographs, and etchings.

Gorman’s photographs in this exhibit were created in Kaktovik, Alaska – an Inupiat village in the embattled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sitting directly in the political, cultural, and environmental crosshairs of the Anthropocene. The polar bears in Gorman’s images are climate refugees facing extinction as the arctic sea ice they depend on for survival retreats at a rapid rate.

In creating the works in this Peabody Essex Museum exhibition, on view through February 5, Koren has described himself as a dramatist of the Anthropocene. His bemused and bewildered creatures, caught between fear and acceptance, occupy landscapes in which human culture has been fragmented and reduced to ruins. His hapless creatures suggest a profound realization of what is unraveling at their feet and speak to the folly of not caring for the environment that sustains us all. For complete details visit www.pem.org Down to the Bone: Edward Koren and Stephen Gorman is presented as part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative and is made possible by the generosity of Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Creighton family, Susan and Appy Chandler, Peter and Sandra Lawrence and individuals who support the Exhibition Incubation Fund: Jennifer and Andrew Borggaard, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Kate and Ford O’Neil, and Henry and Callie Brauer. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.