Immersive installation by Mary Mattingly transforms the gallery into a living laboratory for ecological imagination, resilience, and climate adaptation

This fall, Pace University Art Gallery will present Equilibrium, a solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Mary Mattingly. Featuring living sculpture, photography, and performance, the exhibition explores themes of ecological transformation, resource equity, and climate adaptation. The exhibition opens with a free public reception on Friday, September 26 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Known for her ambitious civic projects that merge art, environmental inquiry, and community engagement, Mattingly reimagines the gallery as a collaborative laboratory — a space for co-learning, foraging, cultivation, and speculative reflection aimed at developing shared solutions.

“Since 2001, I’ve lived in New York City, creating sculptural ecosystems that prioritize access to food, shelter, and water,” said Mattingly. “My work often takes the form of participatory initiatives rooted in care, ecological awareness, and collective imagining.”

Equilibrium brings together several ongoing and interconnected bodies of work, including a new site-specific work now in development and Rooted, a living installation composed of plant species selected for their resilience in flood-prone environments like New York City—particularly those affected by saltwater intrusion. The exhibition also includes Salt Forms, sculptural steel discs that accumulate crystalline salt after being submerged in the city’s brackish waterways. Building on the theme of flooding, Mattingly presents buoy bundles and submerged books from her House and Universe series, evoking themes of knowledge loss, overconsumption, and climate-driven decay.

In addition, the exhibition highlights documentation from Swale, Mattingly’s groundbreaking floating food forest project that challenged food access policies by allowing New Yorkers to freely harvest edible plants from a repurposed barge. The show will also present Night Gardens, a series of photographic collages portraying mythic and adaptive gardens shaped by ecological memory, inviting viewers to reconsider the garden as a space of resilience, disruption, and renewal.

The exhibition also includes an artist talk with Mattingly on Thursday, October 23, at 2:00 p.m. Equilibrium, which remains on view through Saturday, November 1, 2025, is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. All the gallery’s exhibits and events are free and open to the public. The gallery is in Lower Manhattan at 41 Park Row.

About the Artist

Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores ecological relationships through sculptural ecosystems and collage. Her public projects, such as Swale, a floating food forest in New York City’s waterways; Waterpod, a self-sufficient living structure on a barge; and the Flock House Project, a series of mobile habitats, address urgent issues around water, food systems, and climate adaptation. Mattingly’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Storm King Art Center, the International Center of Photography, the Barbican, Seoul Art Center, and the Palais de Tokyo. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Yale School of Art, A Blade of Grass, and the Anchorage Museum among others. Her work has been featured in Art21, The New York Times, and Le Monde. At the core of Mattingly’s practice is a belief in art as a form of investigation and a tool for imagination.

About the Pace University Art Gallery

Founded with the conviction that art is integral to society, the Pace University Art Gallery is a creative laboratory and exhibition space that supports innovation and exploration for both artists and viewers. Open to students, staff, and faculty from across the Pace campuses and, equally, to the Lower Manhattan community and visitors from around the world, the Art Gallery encourages personal investigation and critical dialogue via thought-provoking contemporary art exhibits and public programming. Enhancing the Art Department’s Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts programs, the Art Gallery offers students real-world opportunities to exhibit their own art and to work directly with professional artists to install and promote exhibitions. All exhibits and events are free and open to the public.

About Dyson College of Arts and Science

Pace University’s liberal arts college, Dyson College, offers more than 50 programs, spanning the arts and humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and pre-professional programs (including pre-medicine, pre-veterinary, and pre-law), as well as many courses that fulfill core curriculum requirements. The College offers access to numerous opportunities for internships, cooperative education and other hands-on learning experiences that complement in-class learning in preparing graduates for career and graduate/professional education choices.

About Pace University

Since 1906, Pace University has been transforming the lives of its diverse students—academically, professionally, and socioeconomically. With campuses in New York City and Westchester County, Pace offers bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs to 13,600 students in its College of Health Professions, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Lubin School of Business, Sands College of Performing Arts, School of Education, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

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On September 5, 2025, the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University hosted the twelfth annual Future Environmental Law Professors Workshop. The workshop is designed for law students and graduates considering or planning careers as legal academics in environmental law broadly defined. The workshop included an informational panel, mock interviews, and practice job talks. In addition, this year Professor Rachel Rothschild, recipient of the 2025 Haub Environmental Law Distinguished Junior Scholar Award, delivered the keynote lunch address.

“This workshop is designed to help current and future academics prepare for the environmental law academic teaching market,” said Pace Haub Law Professor Margot Pollans. “We bring together current environmental faculty from all stages in their careers to provide insight into the market process. The event is open to anyone considering a career as an environmental law professor. I’m grateful to my colleagues who show up year after year and generously offer their time and expertise to those seeking to join our ranks.” Professor Pollans joined the Pace Haub Law faculty in 2015. She is the Faculty Director of the Pace Food Law Center and the current Joseph P. D’Alessandro Faculty Scholar. Previously, she was the James D. Hopkins Professor of Law for the 2023–2025 academic years and served as the Shamik and Adrienne Trivedi Faculty Scholar from 2020–2022.

This year’s workshop kicked off with introductory remarks by Professor Pollans, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A on “Navigating the Environmental Law Professor Job Market,” followed by mock screening interviews. This year’s keynote address began with the presentation of the 2025 Haub Environmental Law Distinguished Junior Scholar Award to Professor Rachel Rothschild, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. Professor Rachel Rothschild is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Before joining the Michigan Law faculty, she was a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity. From 2015 to 2017, she was an assistant professor and faculty fellow at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Professor Rothschild’s scholarship sits at the intersection of environmental law, history, and policy. Her recent research examines climate change law and policy as well as the past and present regulation of toxic substances.

In the afternoon, workshop participants who are on the market this year shared mini versions of their job talks and received feedback from faculty and other participants. Topics ranged from discrimination in housing markets, to green burial practices, to the intersections of environmental law and financial markets. In addition to numerous Pace Haub Law School environmental law professors, the President and Dean of Albany Law School along with professors from Albany Law School, Cardozo School of Law, Fordham Law School, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, University of Michigan Law School, NYU School of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law, and more participated in this year’s workshop. The workshop concluded with a closing reception.