Habitat: Making the California Environment

Habitat: Making the California Environment considers landscape painting from the late 19th and early 20th century as a time capsule of California’s ecological world. The works in this exhibition reflect a moment of transformation—after European contact but before the state’s environments were drastically reshaped by rapid urban development. These plein-air landscapes offer a view into California’s environmental past while inviting reflection on present-day ecological concerns, such as invasive species and habitat loss.

In a first-time feature at Langson IMCA, the exhibition also includes a newly commissioned sound work, Landscape Hocket (Orange County). This immersive audio installation draws on early 20th-century California landscape paintings from the IMCA collection—specifically, coastal works by Curtis Chamberlain and Frederick Melville DuMond. Using field recordings, electromagnetic and subsonic audio capture, and sonified plant data, the piece listens to the original sites of these paintings more than a century later. The result is a layered sonic portrait that traces the evolution of these landscapes’ soundscapes and ecologies over time.

Developed in collaboration with a UCI botany researcher, Landscape Hocket (Orange County) highlights native coastal grasses depicted in the paintings that are now rare or absent in the region. In doing so, it expands our understanding of landscape representation—not only visually, but sonically and temporally. The sound work offers a compelling, sensory dimension to Habitat, enriching the exhibition’s exploration of how art, nature, and history continue to shape the California we know today.