The Circular Museum, a collaboration between MoMA’s Ambasz Institute and ART 2030, is a virtual panel-discussion series inviting artists, curators, exhibition designers, and other museum practitioners from around the world to talk about their efforts to address the climate crisis through their work. How is incorporating sustainability and circularity into various levels of museum practice not only urgent, but desirable?
In six sessions, the series will examine how museums and cultural workers have—and can—consider and implement circular and sustainable museological practices. Through detailed discussions of efforts to make exhibition design more environmentally friendly, the Circular Museum brings museum practitioners and artists together with MoMA’s Carson Chan and ART 2030’s Luise Faurschou to elaborate on sustainability practices, challenges, and reflections.
From February to July, the program invites cultural practitioners and art audiences worldwide to join reflective discussions on museums as relevant spaces for positive change.
Carson Chan is the inaugural director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment, and a curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. He develops, leads, and implements the Ambasz Institute’s manifold research initiatives through a range of programs, including exhibitions, public lectures, conferences, seminars, and publications. Before joining MoMA in 2021, he worked as an architecture writer, curator, and educator. In 2006 he cofounded PROGRAM, a project space and residency program in Berlin that tested the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through exhibition making. Chan co-curated the 4th Marrakech Biennale in 2012, and the year after he served as executive curator of the Biennial of the Americas in Denver. He holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Cornell University and a master’s of design studies from Harvard Graduate School of Design. His doctoral research at Princeton University tracks the architecture of public aquariums in the postwar United States against the rise of environmentalism as a social and intellectual movement. He is a founding editor of Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment, an online publishing and research platform that foregrounds the environment in the study of architecture history.
Luise Faurschou is founder and CEO of ART 2030, a nonprofit organization uniting art and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Global Goals. By combining the universal language of art with the Global Goals, ART 2030 promotes peace, equality, and a healthy world for 2030. Joined by visionaries from the art world, ART 2030 works to create art projects, platforms, and experiences for everyone to engage with the Global Goals—the plan for people, planet, and prosperity. Faurschou is also a curator, cultural entrepreneur, and the founding director of Faurschou Art Resources. With over 30 years of experience in the art industry, Faurschou has worked with an array of world-renowned artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Naumann, Ai Weiwei, and others.
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 series 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.