---
title: "Professor Combines Art and Data to Capture Beauty, Diversity of Arctic Ice"
date: 2022-11-28T05:30:00-05:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/professor-combines-art-and-data-to-capture-beauty-diversity-of-arctic-ice"
section: Articles
---
# Professor Combines Art and Data to Capture Beauty, Diversity of Arctic Ice

*November 28, 2022* — by [Jessica Weiss ’05](/author/jessica-weiss-05)


> Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener Collaborates on a New Exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences

*IMG 5439 1920x1080 — Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener places a tracker on arctic ice, providing scientific data and material for his art simultaneously. His new "Iceberg Portraiture" series is on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.*

Images of massive chunks of ice collapsing from Greenland’s glaciers into the ocean have become emblematic of a changing climate and the need to drastically reduce global carbon emissions.

University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener is working to characterize some of these icebergs—capturing their unique identities and the ways they change as they drift in the sea.

His collaborative “Iceberg Portraiture” series is part of an [exhibition](http://www.cpnas.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/arctic-ice-a-visual-archive.html) now on view at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C., which Keener created with landscape researcher Justine Holzman, climatologist Ignatius Rigor and scientist John Woods. It’s the result of almost four years of trips to the Arctic in which they placed trackers onto the ice to collect data with the hopes of making that information tangible and visceral.


*Cy Keener art exhibition*




**Topics:** [Arts & Culture](https://today.umd.edu/tags/arts-culture)


**Tags:** [Climate Change](https://today.umd.edu/topic/climate-change), [Visual Arts](https://today.umd.edu/topic/visual-arts), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research), [Arts](https://today.umd.edu/topic/arts)


**Units:** [College of Arts and Humanities](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-arts-and-humanities)