Curating Climate Change
Jan 27, 2024
Larson Hall at American Swedish Institute
Part of the Climate Solutions Series
Tickets: Free
Climate-focused curatorial positions in contemporary art institutions have recently begun to emerge, making moves to acknowledge the climate crises and establish sustainability practices within the museum industry. Some of the first-ever curators appointed to this role, John Kenneth Paranada (Sainsbury Centre Curator of Art and Climate Change) and Soren Brothers (Allan and Helaine Shiff Curator of Climate Change at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) will join Miranda Massie (Founder and Director, Climate Museum in New York) to discuss the importance of their roles, their approach to planning and executing exhibitions, programs, and educational initiatives—and how they aim to raise awareness and foster a deeper understanding of the complexities and implications associated with climate change through their work.
Come early on Sunday for coffee and conversation!
Please join the Consulate General of Canada in Minneapolis for an informal, no-host coffee hour and conversation with Canadian speakers Soren Brothers, Curator of Climate Change at the Royal Ontario Museum, and Omar Ghandi, award-winning architect based in Halifax. Join us from 10-11 on Sun, Jan 28 at Fika's coffee bar outside of Larson Hall on the second floor of ASI for an intimate opportunity to connect with two of Canada's leaders in imagining a more sustainable future.
About the Panelists
John Kenneth Paranada is the curator of the exhibition Sediment Spirit and co-editor of Planet For Our Future. At the Sainsbury Centre he holds the prestigious position of Curator of Art and Climate Change, funded by the John Ellerman Foundation and is a researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia.
In the first role of its kind for any UK museum institution, Ken will lead research and deliver a range of exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre to promote sustainability and engage with the climate crisis. As Curator of Art and Climate Change, he strives to form networks with some of the leading climate change researchers at the University of East Anglia and beyond, as part of a radical multi-disciplinary approach that will impact the cultural landscape for a global audience.
Soren Brothers is the Allan and Helaine Shiff Curator of Climate Change at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. He is also an Assistant Professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Soren’s research examines the effects of climate change on lakes, and how changes in aquatic systems can influence their greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. More broadly, he is interested in understanding how feedback loops and the transdisciplinary study of lakes can help us better understand and predict global tipping points that may accelerate anthropogenic climate change.
Born in Mississauga and raised in Toronto, Soren has worked on lakes in a diverse array of environments around the world, including the Nunavut tundra, Quebec’s boreal forests, and the Great Lakes. He is also passionate about science communication and community outreach. Before beginning at the ROM in 2021 he was an Assistant Professor of Limnology at Utah State University, and a CREATE program manager and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph, focusing on multiple stressors and cumulative effects in the Great Lakes.
Miranda Massie is the founder and director of New York City’s Climate Museum, the first climate-dedicated museum in the US. The Museum mobilizes the power of arts and cultural programming to invite visitors into climate engagement and agency and to transform our public culture for action at scale.
Massie is active within several coalitions focused on climate-oriented work within the cultural sector, serves on numerous international design juries, and speaks frequently on the need to integrate programming on the climate crisis across the cultural sector.
She left a career in civil rights impact litigation to establish the Museum, having been awarded a Mentorship-in-Residence at Yale Law School and W.E.B. DuBois Institute and Wasserstein Public Interest Fellowships at Harvard University. She is a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
The Climate Solutions Series is made possible through the generous support of The McKnight Foundation. This event is also supported by Minnesota Humanities Center.