Pictures at an Environmental Exhibition: Reflections on the Art of Photography Curation

During the 2023–24 academic year, we worked together at the Harry Ransom Center, a major humanities research center and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, to organize "Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy." The exhibition, which ran from late August 2024 through early February 2025, presented Adams's photographs in a broad historical and geographical context that drew from our shared but distinct perspectives. During the process of working on this exhibition, we have often reflected on the experience of conceiving, researching, and presenting photographs in a way that is both visually striking and intellectually invigorating – in short, on the art of photography curation. In this article, we share some of those reflections, as we discuss the relationship between creative work, scholarship, and museum collaborations. Critiquing an exhibition is not the same as creating it, even though we have sought to bring our scholarly experience into our complementary roles as exhibition curator and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) creator.