Spend the final week of 2024 with Russell Thompkins Jr. & the New Stylistics, Hip-Hop Holiday Honors, Be’la Dona at the Birchmere, Teen-Beat Showcase, Sammy Rae & the Friends, and two art exhibits.
Ends Dec. 31: Xavier Cortada’s Climate Science Art at the National Academy of Sciences
As a longtime resident of Miami, Xavier Cortada is all too familiar with sea level rise. As an artist, he’s made it his mission to raise awareness. Cortada’s most trenchant work is “The Underwater,” a multifaceted, educational outreach-focused project in which he asks Miami-Dade County residents to determine how many (or, usually, how few) feet their home sits above sea level, then provides them a lawn sign with that number so they can post it. Riffing off this idea, Cortada has worked with groups to paint local traffic intersections with the number of feet above sea level, and to install resilient sculptures made of natural and recycled materials in parks to show the sea level elevation. At times, Cortada has gone further afield, including traveling to the North and South Poles. Some of the art he creates on these voyages, including watercolors made using sea ice, are both beautiful and thoughtful; other conceptual projects, such as arrays of shoes around the poles, seem forced. The most poignant note in Climate Science Art comes from its description of Cortada’s permanent sculptures in public parks: As sea levels rise inexorably, he observes, the sculptures will outlive the accuracy of their own measurements. Xavier Cortada’s Climate Science Art runs through Dec. 31 at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW. Weekdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. cpnas.org. Free. —Louis Jacobson