Toxic Museum

Toxic friend, toxic enemy, toxicant, (in)toxicated. This panel is concerned with the manner in which the extraction of natural resources upholds the museum/art world: supplying funding for museums; creating art materials and exhibition infrastructure; and delivering the energy required for climate control to preserve artworks and artefacts. It is also concerned with the afterlives of those relationships. The profound inequities that accompany extractivism and climate emergency flow through museums. Additionally, museums are often tasked with storing and caring for the potentially toxic and hazardous remnants of extraction, occasionally in the form of off-gassing or chemically laden material heritage. What responses are possible?

This panel encourages presentations that consider curatorial approaches, exhibition design, collections management, and art-making strategies that engage with extractivism or climate emergency; the breakdown of fossil-fuel-based materials in museum collections; toxic collections (however that is defined); and/or more sustainable or regenerative options for the sector.

How can you participate? Join us in person by or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions or if we can make this event more accessible for you: Contact us at info.4@concordia.ca

Aaron Ambroso

Three Gulf Coast Museums: Travel Reflections

Nima Esmailpour 

Pocketing Heritage, Toxic Stewardship, and Unborrowed Reserves 

Allison Peacock

Animating Asbestos: Musée Minero de Thetford and Exhibits of Toxic Histories 

Georgia Phillips-Amos

Masters of Light 

Rojina Sabetiashraf 

Crude Reflections: Oil Pool and the Material Foundations of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art 

For the full abstracts and speaker bios, visit the UAAC - AAUC Conference Programme.