Vanderbilt presents Seeds from Svalbard: a collaborative project
In summer 2025, Vanderbilt faculty Jana Harper, Lutz Koepnick, and Jonathan Rattner journeyed to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic that often appears in headlines as either a climate warning sign or a symbol of long-term survival. It’s home to the remnants of an extractive coal-mining industry, and it also houses the Global Seed Vault—an underground facility built to store seeds from around the world, just in case.
For Harper, Koepnick, and Rattner, their trip to Svalbard wasn’t for leisurely travel. The artists went to great lengths to pursue a collaborative project on art and climate change in the Polar North, working in a landscape that is transforming rapidly under the pressure of planetary overheating.
From February until March 6, some of the artists’ work will be on view at Vanderbilt in Seeds from Svalbard, a building-wide installation in Buttrick Hall. The exhibition features continuously running experimental films, large-scale photographs, intricate collages, and project materials that trace the team’s process.
The three set out to respond to that reality by experimenting with different artistic methods and ways of looking. Their outcomes reflect a rather bleak reality: climate change isn’t theoretical; it’s starkly visible. It’s something we can see in the terrain, in the ice, in the shifting edges of land and water. Yet it remains a phenomenon we often overlook, aware of it only passively.
The title nods to Svalbard’s Seed Vault, a global repository designed to protect biodiversity for the future. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage for duplicates of seeds from around the world, conserving them in gene banks. This way, it provides security for the world’s food supply in the event of seed loss from both human and natural disasters. In that spirit, the artists aim to transform Buttrick Hall into an ark of curiosity and inquiry: a space for unexpected encounters that challenge what we take for granted about our environments.
A series of public events will complement the exhibition. On February 19, there is a screening and discussion of Ritter Reframed, a 75-minute collaborative film featuring footage from the artists’ journey in the Arctic. The Vanderbilt New Music Society (VNMS) will perform a concert based on the art of Seeds of Scalbard on the 26th, a week after.
Seeds from Svalbard is a free exhibit and will be open to view in Buttrick Hall all day, every day, until March 6, 2026. For more information, visit https://www.vanderbilt.edu/curbcenter/exhibitions/seedsfromsvalbard/.
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Nastassja is a Hong Kong native who called Boston home for 7 years. She graduated with a BS in Journalism from Emerson College and is currently located in Fort Smith, Arkansas. When she isn’t writing or reading, you can find her crocheting and spending time with her husband, dog, and two cats.
