The Anthropocene in Museums: Reflections, Projections and Imaginings

Location: Alter Seminarraum, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany

Sponsors: Deutsches Museum, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and the Museums and Climate Change Network

Program and abstracts can be found here.

The conference report can be viewed here.

The Anthropocene is an idea now challenging and inspiring museums of many different kinds and in many parts of the world. This invitational workshop focuses on how museum scholars, curators and other practitioners have responded to this concept with new experiments in collecting, exhibiting and programming. It explores what the community of museums engaged with contemporary cultural and environmental issues has learned to date about working with and in the Anthropocene, and asks how these experiences might inform future projects.

Presentations and discussion will explore the Deutsches Museum’s Welcome to the Anthropocene exhibition, focusing particularly on how audiences have responded to this ground-breaking gallery. This project will be drawn into conversation with other current and emerging projects, including the Deutsches Museum’s forthcoming Energy Transitions exhibition, the National Museum of Australia’s Australia in the Age of Humans project and the American Museum of Natural History’s work with Pacific museums responding to climate change.

Call for Proposals
This workshop aims to blend pithy presentations, of 10-15 mins, with plenty of time for extended discussion. We invite proposals for presentations on recent, current or planned museum projects engaging with the Anthropocene. Please forward a 200 word abstract and a short biographical statement to amg2309@columbia.edu.

We also invite expressions of interest from museum scholars, curators and practitioners who may wish to participate and contribute to discussions, but not make a formal presentation.

Please submit proposals and expressions of interest by 2 October 2015.
Participants will be notified of the outcome by 16 October 2015.

Convenors
Please direct enquiries to one of the convenors:
Kirsten Wehner, National Museum of Australia, kirsten.wehner@nma.gov.au
Libby Robin, Australian National University, libby.robin@anu.edu.au
Jenny Newell, American Museum of Natural History, jnewell@amnh.org
Helmuth Trischler, Rachel Carson Center / Deutsches Museum, h.trischler@deutsches-museum.de

Further information can be found here.