Springtime often conjures up images of sunshine, blossoms, and community events. But beneath this seasonal renewal lies a less visible truth: it’s flood season.
As floodwaters threaten neighborhoods with increasing frequency, the reality of this risk often goes unnoticed until it’s too late. That invisibility is what artist, city planner, and flood resilience expert Andrea Limauro sought to address in his recent public art installation, profiled in The Washington Post. His piece, The River and the Town, doesn’t just make flood risk visible — it demands we see it.
Flooding Is the Silent Danger
While extreme heat takes the top spot for weather-related fatalities in the U.S., flooding isn’t far behind. Yet its impact is often under-communicated, especially in historically vulnerable areas like the Georgetown waterfront in Washington, D.C. From the 17.7-foot river crest in 1942 to recurring flood events in 1996, 2011, and again in 2025, the area has a long, documented history with rising waters.
Despite this, flood risk remains largely abstract — reduced to lines on FEMA flood maps or interactive websites like dcfloodrisk.org. These tools are essential, but they fail to convey the visceral human and economic toll flooding takes. That’s where Limauro’s work steps in.
Art as a Portal to Risk and Resilience
Limauro’s mural, a 14-by-8-foot golden ring titled The River and the Town, sits in the Potomac floodplain like a warning beacon. Painted with rich greens and metallic golds, it captures a flooded D.C. landscape — monuments partially submerged, landmarks engulfed, and vignettes of community resilience rendered in loving, analog detail. The mural is both historical and speculative: a climate portal into a past we forget and a future we may yet face.
The structure that supports the mural is as intentional as the art itself. Built with locally sourced wood damaged by storms and treated with the traditional Japanese charring technique shou sugi ban, the ring is a metaphor brought to life — a physical reminder of nature’s power and our role in mitigating it.
What Insurance Professionals Should See
While The River and the Town is a work of public art, it also serves as a profound communication tool. Flood risk, often viewed as abstract or distant, becomes something immediate and emotional. For those in the insurance field, it’s a reminder that risk awareness must go beyond policy limits and elevation certificates. It must engage people where they live, literally and figuratively.
Clients may not pore over topographic data, but they’ll stop for a shimmering mural in a public park. In the same way, proactive risk communication — be it through storytelling, visuals, or community outreach — can shift how individuals understand their vulnerability and the protection they need.
A Cultural Language for Climate Action
In a time when science is politicized and facts contested, Limauro argues that artists must build a new cultural language. As a flood planner for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment and an artist-in-residence at Georgetown University’s Earth Commons Institute, he’s doing exactly that. The River and the Town is the first of four seasonal works in his Climate of Future Past project. Each aims to elevate public understanding of risks tied to nature’s calendar — and perhaps spark action in the process.
The Takeaway
Limauro’s mural isn’t just art — it’s flood risk, made personal. And that’s the kind of perspective that can change how we talk about protection, preparedness, and responsibility. For those of us shaping, underwriting, or selling insurance solutions, it’s a compelling call to rethink how we make risk visible.
The mural was featured in The Washington Post on May 20, 2025. You can read the full article here (subscription may be required).
Photo courtesy: AndreaLimauro.com
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