LEWISTON -With a giant painting by Alexis Rockman depicting Brooklyn under water after millennia of global warming as its centerpiece, the “Green Horizons” exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art explores the concept of environmental sustainability.

The ongoing project includes collaborations with writers and choreographers, including participants in the ongoing Bates Dance Festival, and reaches outside the museum walls to site-specific works such as the planting of fruit trees in downtown Lewiston this spring and an installation, titled “A Small Piece of Woven Space Surrounded by the World Found,” created with materials from the Bates Mill, including thread, shoe laces, woven bedspread fringe and loom cloth beams.

The goal of “Green Horizons,” begun in June and continuing through Dec. 9, is to provoke conversations around the questions: What is green? What is sustainable?

Rockman’s “Manifest Destiny” is an 8- by 24-foot panoramic landscape depicting Brooklyn submerged under water in the year 5000, after three millennia of global warming. The oil and acrylic painting, done on four wood panels in 2003-04, has been exhibited nationwide. It prompts the discussion of such complex issues as mankind’s unintentional impact on local and global ecosystems and how we respond to those influences.

Other “Green Horizons” participants include internationally renowned environmental artists Agnes Denes, Chris Jordan and David Maisel; photographer and cultural anthropologist Mark Silber of Sumner; hay sculptor Michael Shaughnessy, chairman of the art department at the University of Southern Maine; the agitprop Beehive Design Collective; and commissioned collaborative works involving visual artists and Bates College faculty and students.

Some components of the “Green Horizons” exhibition:

n Images of two of Denes’ land reclamation projects, including “Wheatfield – A Confrontation,” for which the artist grew wheat on a site in New York City

n Jordan’s strangely beautiful renderings of high-tech waste products, such as discarded cell phones

n “Sustainable Wardrobe,” clothing made by a Bates student from locally produced fibers and recycled natural fabrics.

n A performance installation featuring light, movement, sound and inventive set pieces on and around Bates’ Lake Andrews by the acclaimed PearsonWidrig DanceTheater and composer Robert Een. Forty dancers, 20-plus singers and musicians and community members of all ages will participate.

Admission to the exhibition and to museum events is open to the public at no cost. The museum is at 75 Russell St.