UCI Visual Studies alum Kim Beil (Ph.D. 2012) has published an article in the New York Times (May 25, 2026) discussing new interdisciplinary scholarship among art historians and ecologists using nineteenth-century landscape art as indicators of historic forest conditions in the Hudson River Valley that could help scientists track environmental changes.
Dr. Beil is Associate Director of ITALIC, an interdisciplinary arts program for first-year students at Stanford University. Students live together and take a year-long course from the program’s teaching team, whose areas of expertise include music visual art, poetry, performance, dance, and film. She is also the author of multiple journal articles, art criticism and exhibition reviews as well as two books: Anonymous Objects: Inscrutable Photographs and the Unknown (SPBH Editions and MACK, 2023) and Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography (Stanford University Press, 2020).