鶹ƽ

Skip to Main Content
鶹ƽ College

Alum creates art to drive environmental impact

August 9, 2023

Betsy Damon ’63, whose large-scale park sculptures have globally inspired exploration and discussion of the mounting global water crisis, was awarded a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. She will use the grant to design a functional water-cleaning sculpture.

Betsy Damon '63“The intention is to find natural ways to prevent algae blooms, reduce pollutants, and keep the water quality sufficiently healthy,” Damon says.

Damon is an internationally acclaimed artist who has been called a practical visionary and a humanist. Her work has been widely reviewed, exhibited, and taught. She is known for her performance works, like “7000 Year Old Woman” (1976), and her large-scale ecological designs, like “The Living Water Garden” (1998) in Chengdu, China. She has directed many collaborative public performance events, most notably in Chengdu and Lhasa. An art history major at 鶹ƽ, Damon earned her MFA at Columbia University.

Currently, she is involved with various international exhibitions, museums, and activists in Ireland, Poland, Turkey, and China, and is exhibiting at Stony Brook University and the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands. Damon’s awards include the Bush Foundation, Heinz Foundation, NEA, UN Habitat, Waterfront Center Top Honor, five awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and others.

For the past four decades, Damon’s work has focused on a central subject — water — which she reveals as the connective, creative, and collaborative medium behind all life. She promotes public consciousness of living water and invites us to place water itself as the foundation of all planning and design. Her work, which traverses the complexities of water from the molecular scale to the levels of ecosystems and societies, has been archived by .

Related News


Students+listen+intently+during+an+election+program+at+the+Tang+Teaching+Museum
The $175,000 award will support SkidMORE Discourse: Meaningful Open Respectful Engagement (M.O.R.E.), a two-year initiative to help students build the habits of listening, critical thinking, and respectful dialogue that strengthen both campus life and democracy.
Apr 30 2026

Pushkala+Prasad+
Zankel Professor of Management for Liberal Arts Students earns 鶹ƽ’s top teaching award for her interdisciplinary, globally focused approach to business education.
Apr 30 2026

Fred+Braunstein+%E2%80%9908+sits+in+a+chair+in+鶹ƽ%27s+Wyckoff+Center
Now the in-house principal counsel for the global online marketplace Taskrabbit, he says exploring questions of gender, sexuality, and race at 鶹ƽ expanded his worldview.
Apr 24 2026