Death of a Glacier

A comment on our changing climate

EXPECTED FALL 2025

Death of a Glacier is an interdisciplinary art/science outreach effort associated with research exploring deglaciation across the western hemisphere. The research campaign, led by a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, aims to understand the global decline of glaciers by better understanding normative glacial conditions (i.e. how glaciers would behave in the absence of human influence). Given their prior work, they hypothesize that these glaciers took thousands of years to advance to their late 19th-century (industrialization era) size. In contrast, retreating the same distance only took decades to centuries. This research and its methodologies are new and unique and have the potential to clarify the influence of humanity on glaciers globally.

The intended three-part film is a collaboration with Andrew Jones, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin, who, in addition to being the glaciologist leading the research, is a concert bassist. The project intends to bring attention to the plight of glaciers and humanity’s role in the story by filming a short series of videos in Iceland and Bolivia. This is a two-year project with the final film intended to debut as an installment in an art exhibit exploring the theme of death at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin in the fall of 2025.