CENTER TEAM

 Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison

Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (often referred to simply as “the Harrisons”) have worked for over forty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development. The Harrisons’ concept of art embraces a breathtaking range of disciplines. They are historians, diplomats, ecologists, investigators, emissaries and art activists. Their work involves proposing solutions and involves not only public discussion, but also community involvement and extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals in an art context. Past projects have focused on watershed restoration, urban renewal, agriculture and forestry issues and urban ecologies. The Harrisons’ visionary projects have, on occasion, led to changes in governmental policy and have expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations variously in the United States and Europe. There is a large body of literature on their work. They have exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe, and been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the European Union, the German, Dutch, French and English Governments and have won the following:

• 1992 Nagoya Biennale, Artec. 2nd prize for “Atempause fur den Sava Fluss”, translated into Japanese.

• 1996 Concrete Association, Award for “California Wash”, for doing the most original concrete work in the USA for that year.

• 2001 inaugural Groenevald Prize awarded for Greenheart Vision, for doing the most for the Dutch land scape in that year.

• 2010 inaugural AWE inspiring Award for arts and the environment, for doing the most to explain Global Warming to the British Public, The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in association with the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World.

• 2013 NACIS inaugural Corlis Benefidio Award for Imaginative Cartography from the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), 2013, a Lifetime Award

ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS

They are historians, diplomats, ecologists, investigators, emissaries and art activists. Their work involves proposing solutions and involves not only public discussion, but community involvement and extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals in an art context. Past projects have focused on watershed restoration, urban renewal, agriculture and forestry issues and urban ecologies

What We've Achieved