Curators of Climate Change: Art Museums in the Anthropocene

This thesis explores the entry of climate change into fine art museums through a series of exhibitions, examining the participation of the art museum in climate change discourse and the ways in which climate art challenges museum conventions. I argue that the institutionalization of climate change art has been inconsistent and incoherent, in part because of ignorance and misunderstanding on the part of museums, in part because of slowness in the field of art history to take environmental approaches, and in part because of the inherent difficulties in exhibiting work which challenges museum norms. I discuss the historical separation of nature and culture in museums and trace the ways in which this opposition informs interpretations of climate change art. I analyze techniques used by artists in creating climate change art, arguing that these practices are revelatory of how climate change can be visualized but are also subject to legacies of art historical treatments of nature. I then present a chronology of six exhibitions and analyze the methods used by curators and museums in displaying and interpreting work, arguing that these tactics place museums as ideological actors within climate change discourse. I analyze the common curatorial approaches and discourses used in these exhibitions, focusing on the issues of categorization, misunderstandings, fragility, the opposition of nature and culture, and publicness. These exhibitions, through their experimentations with the space of the museum, point towards future possibilities for climate change art and its ability to communicate emotionally with the public.