Florida-based artist Carin Wagner has an exhibit titled “Vulnerable and Vanishing Trees” on display in Macon’s Museum of Arts and Science. The exhibition serves to bring awareness to critically endangered tree species due to the negative effects of climate collapse.
The “Vulnerable and Vanishing Trees” exhibit is available until April 18, 2026, but the Museum of Arts and Sciences hopes that Wagner will display the series again in the future.
“My work provides an important bridge between the scientists working to protect the trees and the communities that are affected by the loss of the trees,” Wagner said at her Gallery Talk in November. “It is my mission to bring awareness to the disappearance of our precious forests.”
The exhibit is filled with individual photographs of various endangered species of trees. Wagner excised each tree silhouette its background, which resulted in a negative image, and are then printed on silk banners. The inverted photograph leaves the silhouette of the tree to be white, which represents “a Ghost Forest of dozens of individual trees” as described on the Museum of Arts and Sciences Macon website. Several of these silk banners hang on both sides of the room of the exhibit.
“Her idea for this exhibit was to have them set up to where it’s almost like a forest when you’re walking along it,” said Ashley Curtis, Communications and Collections Manager of the Museum of Arts and Sciences. “We do serve a lot of children here, so we had to put up the stanchions, but I still think walking along the stanchions, you can get that feel of being immersed in them.”
Additionally, Wagner displayed individual, hyper-realistic oil paintings of four different endangered tree species. The linen canvases are hung on the entrance wall of the exhibit room.
“They look like photographs, but they’re hand-painted,” Curtis said. “They take her up to a year and a half to paint, and that’s pretty much the only thing she’s working on in that time.”
“She’s very committed to this cause,” Curtis said,” and I think it’s very important to inform people about this.”
