EPISODE 4: The Journey to Sustainability Onsite
The Circular Museum, a collaboration between MoMA’s Ambasz Institute and ART 2030, is a virtual panel discussion series inviting artists, museum directors, curators, exhibition designers, and other museum practitioners from around the world to talk about their efforts to address the climate crisis through their work. In six episodes, the series explores how incorporating sustainability and circularity into various levels of museum practice is not only urgent but desirable.
The fourth episode brings together artist Olafur Eliasson and curator Yuko Hasegawa to revisit their collaboration on the exhibition Sometimes the river is the bridge at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2020. Having approached the project as a pilot for ‘sustainable exhibition making, the exhibition resulted in displays of artworks powered by solar panels and recorded drawings of their low-emission transport journey from Berlin to Tokyo. This conversation revisits the challenges and successes of a pilot and unfolds upon its learnings for sustainable artistic and curatorial practices today.
Speakers
Yuko Hasegawa - Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Yuko Hasegawa is the Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. She was Professor in Curatorial Studies at the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, and Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the 2nd Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021), Olafur Eliasson: Sometimes the river is the bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2020), Fukami: A Plunge into the Japanese Aesthetic, Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, Paris (2018), the 7th International Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2017), and Japanorama: NEW VISION ON ART SINCE 1970, Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017).
Olafur Eliasson - Artist
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson works with sculpture, painting, photography, film, installation, and digital media. His works continuously explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Eliasson is internationally renowned for installations that challenge the way we perceive and co-create our environments. Since the mid-1990s, he has realised numerous major exhibitions and created works in public space around the world. The weather project (2003), an enormous artificial sun shrouded by mist, in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, was seen by more than two million people. For his project Ice Watch, Eliasson and geologist Minik Rosing brought free-floating icebergs from a fjord outside Nuuk, Greenland, to public squares in European cities (Copenhagen, 2014; Paris, 2015; and London, 2018) to raise awareness of the climate crisis. In 2020, Sometimes the river is the bridge at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo focused on hosting an exhibition sustainably. In the same year Eliasson created Earth Speakr together with children around the world and with support from the German Federal Foreign Office; a global artwork that invites kids to speak up for the planet.
Moderators:
Carson Chan, Director of Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Study of the Built and Natural Environment at MoMA
Luise Faurschou, Founder & CEO of ART 2030
Accessibility
Automated captioning is available for all online programs. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning are available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. For accessibility questions or accommodation requests please email [email protected] or call (212) 708-9781.
This session will be led virtually through Zoom, a free video-conferencing software. Participants are encouraged to use a computer, smartphone, or tablet with a camera and Internet access, if possible. Participants may also dial in using a phone line. Participants will receive a Zoom link upon registering.
This event was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.