American environmentalism is today an ideological movement that is highly politicized. When it originated, however, it was a literary and artistic revolution, a movement that merged the romantic written word and painted image with an admiration for our natural surroundings. The National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition unravels the evolution of environmental attitudes and movements through portraits of the people that shaped this history. Beginning, naturally, with Henry David Thoreau and John Burroughs, the show goes from the early–19th century to the movement’s growth in the 20th, with activists such as Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Rachel Carson. It reaches the present day with contemporary beacons Carl Sagan and Maya Lin. —Lucy Horowitz