Art Curators Conference

Confronting Environmental crisis: From Policy to practice

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 | 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

The Association of Art Museum Curators presented a conversation between Xavier Cortada, Artist and Professor of Practice, Department of Art & Art History, University of Miami and Jane Winchell, Sarah Fraser Robbins Director of the Art & Nature Center, and Curator of Natural History, Peabody Essex Museum

This program is dedicated to the environmental crisis. The conversation will offer a variety of perspectives on how museums, curators, conservators, academics, and creatives are confronting climate change, sea level rise, and other aspects of the evolving global environmental crisis. As museum professionals, what can we do to address a grave situation that has profound implications on all aspects of our cultural practices? Analogous to the airline announcement to put on your own mask before assisting others, this session begins with self-care, and then looks at the response to the crisis from a global policy perspective and through the lens of curatorial, conservation, and artistic practice.

"HELLO" at the AAMC Conference

Art museum curators attending the AAMC annual conference in New York City participated in Cortada’s HELLO project. Using an app, they discovered their property elevations and put the numbers they discovered on name tags that they wore around the conference, just as folks did at COP26 when the project was launched. Participants also posed in front of a larger-than-life HELLO tag holding their corresponding elevations.