Warm, warmer, art museum

: the social agency of art museums in the climate emergency

Abstract

Climate emergency is one of society’s most pressing and contemporary challenges, since it can create areas of uninhabitable climate and provoke conflict zones but also because it accelerates mass extinction. Fossil fuels are a driving factor, continuously pushing the planet towards its limits. Departing from the observation that many art museums across Europe are in some way sponsored by fossil fuel corporations, this research attempts to find out if and how art museums can reflect and act upon the current climate emergency. While art museums serve many purposes, they fundamentally define and express major social narratives by providing a space for participation and knowledge production. By focusing on collecting, preserving and showing art, they become – at their best - a critical storyteller of social narratives, in a position to deal with complex contemporary challenges like the climate emergency. Hence, this research focuses on how art museums can be agents for social change, particularly in dealing with the challenge of climate emergency. A brief literature review on the relationship between art museums and agency composes the first part of the dissertation, articulating concepts on the capacity of art within the museum environment (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Greenhill 1994; Janes and Sandell 2019), education and communication in the art museum (Rogoff 2008; Nielsen 2017) and theories on social agency (Eisenhardt 1989; Shapiro 2005). Acknowledging the conflicting relationship between the corporate sponsorship of museums and their accountability and agency in the climate emergency, chapter two engages in the critical analysis of the difficulties that art museums face in utilising their outlined social agency in the climate emergency. Based on a literature review of the concept of sponsorships, particular focus is set on how this relates to the previously established agent-principal relationship as well as an underlying conflict of interest. This is then further illustrated by analysing the sponsorship of BP to both the Tate Modern and the British Museum. This research suggests that art can operate in society from within institutions, and that art activism practices might even have a larger impact in the context of art museums that are sponsored by fossil fuel corporations and thus provoke action towards the climate emergency. This will be illustrated by a close analysis of one performance within the case study - “Hidden Figures” by Liberate Tate and a comparison will be drawn to briefly outlined performances by BP or Not BP?.

Date of Award	3 Dec 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Peter Hanenberg (Supervisor)