Dr. Michael Tobias, President of the Dancing Star Foundation, and internationally respected global ecologist, author, and filmmaker presented an afternoon seminar, “A History of Imagination in Wilderness,’ on Sunday, January 29, at the Wildling Art Museum. Says Tobias, “Our ability to survive as a species may, in fact, be dependent upon our innate need to celebrate and revere nature.’

This relaxed afternoon sojourn –with repeated breaks for cookies and coffee and warm-hearted discussion- involved a fascinating tour through the richly illuminated galleries of art history, the natural sciences, philosophy, and spiritual ecology; and all through the eyes of Michael Tobias. Tobias, who has been a professor of Humanities and Environmental Studies at UCSB, California State University at Northridge, Dartmouth College, and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, is also an artist, scientist, and explorer, who has done research for his many films and books in over 60 countries. His unique presentation for the Wildling Art Museum underscored major themes he has tracked, from the cave paintings of Lascaux, to the early Christian, Buddhist, and Jain ascetics, to the Renaissance; from extinct birds, as painted by Audubon, Keulemans, and Lear, to photographers such as Ansel Adams’ New Mexico, Robert Polidori’s Chernobyl, and Craig Potton’s Antarctic Dry Valleys.

With nearly two hundred slides and a world-roving discussion, Tobias covered a terrain of thrilling juxtapositions that lends new and original substance to the history of art of the wilderness. What does Leonardo have in common with Dr. Dolittle? Jan Van Eyck and the early Netherlandish miniaturists with today’s flower gardens? Tibetan Buddhist iconography with 19th century Romantic painters, poets, and explorers? Ecological concerns in Medieval Greenland with those of today’s New Zealand –as captured by great ornithological painters? Japanese sand gardens of the Edo period and Jan Breughel the Elder?