This course reviews artists' responses during times of crisis. Whether floods, war, racial, ethnic and gender violence or pandemics of catastrophic dimensions, artists respond in thoughtful and powerful ways, creating work that emblematizes the horrors, and provides places of mourning, memory and healing. This course overviews contemporary art of the past several decades, showing critical turning points when such crises resulted in major cultural change. The ideas and aesthetics of the artists’ work selected for study show persistent social conscience and humanism.