In contemporary life and education, the local is marginalized in favor of large-scale economies of consumption that are indifferent to ecological concerns. The consequences of neglecting local human and natural communities include a degraded habitat, loss of wilderness, alienation, rootlessness, and lack of connection to communities. Place-based education responds to this indifference to local ecological concerns by grounding student learning in the experiences of their own lives, communities, and regions. Critical place-based pedagogy broadens the scope of place-based learning by incorporating critical theory into the curriculum of the local. This article describes a critical pedagogy of place as a prelude to describing contemporary art that is involved with ecological and social issues. Works of contemporary artists that are responsive to the ecology of local places and culture will be explored as examples of collaboration between artistic and scientific approaches. These artists suggest possibilities for the educator to create a critical pedagogy about place and to resist the isolation of the classroom from vital issues of community and ecology. The intersection of critical theory, place-based learning, and art education provides a robust framework for the theory and practice of education concerned with ecological issues.