Consuming beauty while extracting resources

“Melas Chasms Sunrise,’’ by Isabel Beavers, in the show “Golden Spike,’’ at Brookline (Mass.) Arts Center, through Jan. 31.  This is a three-person exhibition about the environment and climate change. A "golden spike" is presented as a signifier of …

Melas Chasms Sunrise,’’ by Isabel Beavers, in the show “Golden Spike,’’ at Brookline (Mass.) Arts Center, through Jan. 31.

This is a three-person exhibition about the environment and climate change. A "golden spike" is presented as a signifier of the extreme man-made change in recent geologic record. Artists Beavers, Allison Gray and William Van Beckum explore the concept of "anthropocence," or the landscape as evidence of humanity's mark in time through models and other representations of landscapes from across history. "We simultaneously consume aesthetic beauty from landscapes, while treating them as sites of extraction and destruction," the artists say.

Overlooking Leverett Pond in Olmsted Park in Brookline

Overlooking Leverett Pond in Olmsted Park in Brookline

Here’s an edited version of a Wikipedia list of historic buildings in Brookline (Massachusetts’s largest town) that are open to the public: