Art Sounds Alarm for Utah's Disappearing Great Salt Lake

PARK CITY, UT – January 23, 2026 – As the Sundance Film Festival unfolds for its final year in Park City, a powerful new art exhibition is leveraging the international spotlight to issue an urgent environmental warning. Susan Swartz Studios today opened Natural Order, a landmark show bringing together the formidable talents of photographers Edward Burtynsky and Sebastião Salgado with the celebrated paintings of Susan Swartz. The exhibition aims to celebrate the magnificence of the natural world while sounding a desperate alarm for the ecological crisis unfolding just miles away at Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Organized in partnership with Sundaram Tagore Gallery and curated by Claire Breukel, the exhibition’s debut is strategically timed. It coincides with the world premiere of The Lake, a highly anticipated documentary directed by Abby Ellis that investigates the environmental and public health emergency surrounding the shrinking saline sea. The confluence of art, film, and advocacy creates a potent call to action during a week when the world’s attention is fixed on this mountain town.

An Ecological Crisis on a Knife's Edge

The Great Salt Lake is in a state of unprecedented peril. Having lost an estimated 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area, the lake hit a record low in 2022 and remains dangerously below its minimum healthy level. Scientists warn it could disappear entirely within a few years without drastic intervention. The primary culprit is human water diversion, with over 80% of the water that would naturally flow to the lake being redirected, largely for agriculture to grow water-intensive crops like alfalfa.

The consequences of this decline are catastrophic, creating what some have termed an "environmental nuclear bomb" for the region. As the water recedes, it exposes a lakebed laden with toxic materials, including arsenic, mercury, and selenium. When windstorms sweep across this dry playa, they can whip the hazardous particles into the air, threatening the respiratory and neurological health of the 2.8 million people living in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and along the Wasatch Front. A 2022 Brigham Young University study confirmed alarming levels of this toxic dust around the lake's perimeter.

Beyond the direct human health risk, the collapse of the lake ecosystem threatens a vital hemispheric hub for biodiversity. The lake and its surrounding wetlands, which constitute 75% of all wetlands in Utah, are a critical stopover for 338 species of migratory birds. Their survival depends on a delicate food web anchored by rare, reef-like bacterial structures called microbialites, which feed the brine shrimp and flies that in turn feed the birds. As salinity spikes in the shrinking lake, this entire ecosystem is on the brink of collapse. Experts draw ominous parallels to the fates of other saline lakes, such as California's Owens Lake, now a major source of dust pollution, and the Aral Sea, the site of one of the world's worst ecological disasters.

Art and Film as Urgent Messengers

Against this dire backdrop, Natural Order and The Lake serve as powerful, complementary messengers. The documentary, executive produced by actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, follows the work of scientists and advocates like Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed as they fight to avert disaster. “This film is about survival and averting disaster through the steady efforts of people who refuse to look away from what’s happening right before their eyes,” director Abby Ellis stated. The film’s premiere will culminate in an opening reception at Susan Swartz Studios, directly linking the cinematic call to action with the artistic one.

The exhibition itself translates the stark scientific data of the crisis into an emotive, visceral experience. “The majestic artworks of these three artistic giants Edward Burtynsky, Sebastião Salgado and Susan Swartz inspire wonder, connection and appreciation, and ultimately awaken in us a deeper sense of care,” says curator Claire Breukel. The show transports viewers from the grand, black-and-white ecological transformations captured by Salgado to the richly detailed, often unsettling industrial landscapes photographed by Burtynsky. These global perspectives are grounded by Swartz's immersive works, which use texture and color to re-establish a human connection to the natural world.

A Trio of Environmental Vanguards

The three artists featured in Natural Order have long dedicated their careers to exploring humanity's relationship with the environment. Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is renowned for his large-format images that reveal the staggering scale of human industry, from mines to quarries to oil fields, creating images that are simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado (1944–2025), celebrated for his epic and profoundly human black-and-white works, co-founded Instituto Terra with his wife Lélia. The acclaimed initiative has successfully reforested a vast swath of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, planting millions of trees. The artists previously collaborated in support of the institute at a 2022 Sotheby's gala.

For artist and gallery owner Susan Swartz, the mission is deeply personal. “Edward, Sebastião and I have dedicated our artistic careers to raising awareness and generating appreciation for our surroundings,” Swartz says. “My own illness due to mercury poisoning – believed to be from eating contaminated fish -followed by Lyme disease, instilled an ardent motivation to ensure our environment and our food sources remain uncontaminated.” This personal history infuses her work with a palpable urgency. Her paintings in the show range from earlier brushstroke depictions of trees to more recent relief collages that embed natural objects directly into lusciously painted surfaces.

A Confluence of Culture and Cause

By uniting these forces, Natural Order aims to do more than just raise awareness; it seeks to generate direct support for preservation. Twenty percent of all sales from the exhibition will be donated to initiatives working to save the Great Salt Lake, contributing to a growing coalition that includes organizations like FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake and The Nature Conservancy.

The urgency of this mission cannot be overstated. “The Great Salt Lake is at a tipping point,” Swartz warns. “As the most populated lake in the world, the toxic soil that will be left as it dries up will make it uninhabitable, not to mention eradicate its biodiversity.”

Swartz is no stranger to using her platform for environmental advocacy. She served as the Official Olympic Environmental Artist for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and has partnered with luminaries like Dr. Jane Goodall on campaigns and documentary films. This exhibition is a continuation of that lifelong commitment, using the universal language of art to confront a local crisis with global implications.

Natural Order is on view at Susan Swartz Studios, 260 Main St. Park City, Utah, through February 23, 2026.