Ashley E. Smith is a graduate student in the Field of Museum Studies at Harvard University and a registered nurse whose work engages the intersection of natural history, environmental science, and public interpretation. Her practice is rooted in freshwater systems, where she approaches rivers as both ecological environments and living archives—sites of observation, record, and ongoing change.

Working across field documentation, specimen study, and narrative interpretation, Smith draws on naturalism and Riverkeeper-informed fieldwork alongside her background in museum studies and public health. She is particularly interested in how environmental knowledge is produced, translated, and made legible to the public—how rivers are not only studied, but recorded, curated, and carried into shared understanding. Central to her work is the belief that closer relationships to local watersheds, and an awareness of how water moves through ecological and human systems, can foster deeper forms of stewardship, community care, and ecological literacy.

Her curatorial research explores the intersection of art and natural history as complementary modes of environmental record. She looks to historical and material precedents such as the Blaschka glass invertebrates, the journals and cyanotypes of Henry David Thoreau, and the Adirondack watercolors of Winslow Homer as models for how observation, aesthetics, and scientific inquiry converge. Through these frameworks, her work considers how artistic and observational practices can be mobilized to interpret climate change, water quality, and ecological transformation over time.

Building on projects such as In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss and Fragile Legacy, Smith develops curatorial approaches that bridge art, history, and contemporary environmental science. Her work seeks to connect archival and aesthetic traditions with present-day water quality and biodiversity research, particularly through the efforts of organizations affiliated with the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Now based in Birmingham, Alabama, her fieldwork centers on the Cahaba River, extending a longer engagement with the Potomac River, where her journey began. Across these systems, she maintains an evolving practice of documentation and interpretation, positioning freshwater environments as sites through which natural history, public health, and narrative can be brought into meaningful dialogue.