Beuys was instrumental in creating the current difficulties that surround the problem of "ecological aesthetics." He was strategically brilliant in trading on his recognition as a gallery artist to gain attention for his action projects such as 7000 Oaks and the polemics of his lecture tours. Ultimately all these activities have been drawn into an art discourse, but they don't fit comfortably. To deal with new forms of human expression and action, critics and curators are continually trying to stuff them into institutional boxes where they don't fit. Old categories need to collapse before we can begin to create a different dialogue on aesthetics in a sustainable culture.

We will need a new aesthetic to embrace the three categories of object, participation, and action without privileging the conventional formal characteristics of objects. In this aesthetic, the distinctions between art, design, and architecture will blur as critics discover new relations between the value of form and the value of use. Hildegard Kurt was correct when she criticized the art world for viewing sustainability in terms of environmental subjects instead of as a larger cultural challenge. The culture that Kurt identified within the wider sustainability discourse remains an issue and needs to be overcome. This will lead to new forms of solidarity within the culture of sustainability.

Imagination is an artist's greatest asset. It can produce bold visions of what a sustainable future might be like. People can be moved and aroused by powerful environments, innovative designs, and practical demonstrations of active engagement. With open minds and a willingness to collaborate, those who seek a place in the culture of sustainability must move forward. The problem of "ecological aesthetics" will solve itself.

1. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: World Commission on Environment and Development (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987): 43.
2. For a discussion of the major ecological theories, ideologies, and movements, see Caroline Merchant, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (New York and London: Routledge, 1992).
3. Our Common Future, 65.
4. Our Creative Diversity: Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development (Paris: UNESCO, 1995).
5. Hildegard Kurt, "Aesthetics of Sustainability," in Aesthetics of Ecology: Art in Environmental Design, Theory and Practice, ed. Heike Strelow in cooperation with Vera David, initiated by Herman Prigann (Basel, Berlin, and Boston: Birkhдuser, 2004).
6. Ibid., 239
7. Ibid., 238.
8. I have taken the breakdown of project types from Mark Rosenthal's essay, "Some Attitudes of Earth Art: From Conception to Adoration," in Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art, ed. Alan Sonfist (New York: Dutton, 1983): 60-72
9. See Timothy Corrigan Correll and Patrick Arthur Polk, "Muffler Men, Muсecos, and Other Welded Workers: Occupational Sculpture from Automotive Debris" and "Streetwise: The Mafundi of Dar es Salaam," in The Cast-Off Recast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999): 31-80; 81-110.
10. "Aesthetics of Sustainability," 240.
11. Ibid.
12. The projects by Beuys, Feigenbaum, Sherk, and Chin are documented in Landscape and Environmental Art, ed. Jeffrey Kastner, survey by Brian Wallis (London and New York: Phaidon Press, 1998).
13. Heiner Stachelhaus, Joseph Beuys, trans. David Britt (New York, London, and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1991): 64.
14. Shelley Sacks, "Performing an Aesthetics of Interconnectedness," in the ongoing online exhibition EnterChange: Performance and Nature, curated by Wallace Heim for Green Museum, 2004.
15. See the review by Nicholai Ourousoff, "Confronting Blight With Hope," New York Times, Feb. 24, 2005.
16. An excellent introduction to the Todds' work is Nancy Jack Todd and John Todd, From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1994).