Ellyn Weiss is a Washington DC-based visual artist and independent curator (ellynweiss.com) who has shown widely in over 30 solo and numerous group exhibitions. In her artwork, she is committed to engagement with the most pressing issues we face, notably global climate change and the rights of women.
For the first half of her professional life, Ellyn practiced environmental law. She was a Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General when the first Environmental Protection division was established and a partner in a DC public interest law firm, Harmon and Weiss, where, as General Counsel to UCS, she brought litigation that established public participation rights and enforced basic standards of safety for nuclear power plants. Finally, Ellyn was a partner in the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag, LLP (formerly Foley, Hoag & Eliot LLP).
For Ellyn, the transition from law to art involved thinking about the same problems through a different lens. She has mounted collaborative installations on the melting of the polar icecaps, the destruction of coral reefs, and the movement of tropical diseases northward—all caused by climate change. The American University Museum in Washington, DC, showed her most ambitious collaborative installation, The Human Flood, in 2024. It focuses on the climate catastrophes that have forced millions of people to leave behind home regions made uninhabitable by climate catastrophes.
Ellyn serves on the Board of Directors of the Union of Concerned Scientists. She is past President of the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. She was founding Board President of the Touchstone Foundation for the Arts in DC.