Symposium Speakers’ Bios — Art, Nature, and Environmental Awareness: Alexander von Humboldt’s Legacy

Randall Griffin is a professor of art history at Southern Methodist University. He earned his Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of Delaware. He specializes in American art history and nature in American modernism. He has authored Georgia O'Keeffe (2014), the award-winning Winslow Homer: An American Vision (2006), and Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age (2001).

Eleanor Jones Harvey is a senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is the organizing curator for the exhibition Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture (2020) and the author of the accompanying catalogue. Harvey earned her Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University. Her critically acclaimed exhibition The Civil War and American Art (2012) was presented at SAAM and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Thomas Lovejoy—known as the "godfather of biodiversity"—is an innovative and accomplished conservation biologist. He earned his Ph.D. in biology from Yale University. He is credited with introducing the term “biological diversity” to the scientific community in 1980. Lovejoy is a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University.

Dario Robleto is the artist-in-residence in neuroaesthetics at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering. In 2015, he became an artistic consultant to “Breakthrough Message,” a global effort led by distinguished scientists to encourage healthy debate surrounding best practices for science communication. This intellectual and technical collaboration primarily focuses on the efforts to search for intelligent beings beyond Earth.

George Steinmann is a multifaceted artist, musician, and researcher who crosses disciplines in his artistic endeavors and fieldwork, covering topics such as the ecologies of forests and water, cultural sustainability, climate change, biodiversity, and local knowledge of indigenous cultures. His recent work blends art and environmental aesthetics to raise awareness about climate change.

Andrea Wulf is the author of the prize-winning book The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (2015), that traces Humboldt’s influences through the great minds he inspired in revolution, evolution, ecology, conservation, art, and literature.