Painting at the End of the Ice Age

On view October 4, 2024 – September 14, 2025
ConocoPhillips Arctic Gallery, Second Floor, West Wing

With vast amounts of ice locked in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, Alaska has one of the largest areas of glaciation in the northern hemisphere. Cordova-based painter David Rosenthal’s fascination with glacial landscapes has led him to document the retreat of global ice for the past 45 years.

A Visual Chronicle of a Changing Landscape

Rosenthal’s career observing the retreat of glacial ice and the emergence of post-glacial landscapes coincides with what he sees as the final years of our current geologic Ice Age, offering viewers a visual narrative of change over time. In this exhibition of 67 of his works, paintings are paired with reflections from the artist, alongside perspectives from geologists, oceanographers, biologists, and self-taught naturalists.

In addition to glaciers and ice fields in Alaska, the exhibition also features scenes from the artist’s time on scientific research trips in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Northwest Passage. The paintings are based on information from historical and scientific texts and extrapolation from Rosenthal’s observations and field sketches.

Rosenthal’s works include paintings that blur the lines between memory and reality, offering imagined scenes from hundreds of years ago, such as what glaciation might have looked like in the Copper River basin. He explains that they represent his best effort to describe accurately the ongoing retreat of the ice, conveying imagined and experienced scenes (from 13,000 BC to 2023), anecdotes from his travels, and reflections on ice and glaciers from Alaska to Antarctica.

Blending observation, science, and emotion, Painting at the End of the Ice Age is one artist’s visual testament to a changing landscape.