EPISODE 5: Representing and Implementing Alternative Futures
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 fifth episode brings artist Josh Kline together with Johanna Burton, the Maurice Marciano Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles for a conversation about their distinct experiences and perspectives as artist and facilitator, respectively. Kline uses immersive installations that employ video, sculpture, photography, and design to explore today’s most urgent social and political issues, interlinking climate change, automation, disease, and the weakening of democracy.
MOCA is the first major art museum in the United States to establish an Environmental Council, which works alongside MOCA staff to embed environmental consideration into all aspects of museum operations. As Burton will discuss, MOCA is also centering climate in its public programs and exhibitions, including a landmark 2024 exhibition focused on Josh Kline’s Climate Change cycle.
This discussion is an opportunity to look forward, focusing on Kline’s and Burton’s aspirations for their future projects, and presenting the audience with insight into their collaboration and production processes.
Johanna Burton has been the Maurice Marciano Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles since November 2021. Burton has been active in the contemporary art field for more than 20 years, including more than a decade of leadership experience in major museums and prominent arts and education institutions. An art historian, curator, writer, and educator, Burton’s past posts include her tenures as executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, director of the graduate program at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), and associate director and senior faculty member at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (ISP). She was a 2019 Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) Fellow.
Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, USA) is best known for creating immersive installations–using video, sculpture, photography, and design–that question how emergent technologies are being used to change human life in the 21st Century. Kline’s practice is focused on work and class, exploring how today’s most urgent social and political issues—climate change, automation, disease, and the weakening of democracy—impact the people who make up the labor force. Kline’s art has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. Kline’s works are included in the collections of major museums including those of The Museum of Modern Art; The Guggenheim; The Whitney Museum; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Kline is currently the subject of a museum survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Moderators
Carson Chan, Director, Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Study of the Built and Natural Environment, MoMA
Luise Faurschou, Founder and CEO, 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.
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.
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.