We are at a crucial historical moment, in which the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List has announced a catastrophic decline in global biodiversity. Yet nature is, necessarily, interpreted in museums, through taxidermy dioramas and skeletal mounts; virtual tours and digital databases; image, text and film. The Unnatural History Museum brings together museum professionals and academics across disciplines to platform vital conversations about the museum mediation of the natural world during the sixth mass extinction.
Each session will be hosted on Zoom (link at top of Eventbrite page) to allow for international participation, and will take the format of short presentations focussed around a specific theme, followed by a synthesised Q&A and roundtable discussion.
The theme of this third session, co-organised with 'PITCH: Petroculture's Intersections with the Cultural Heritage sector in the context of green transitions', will be on Petrocultures, featuring presentations from and discussion with:
Dolly Jørgensen (Universitet i Stavanger), Project Introduction
Camille-Mary Sharp (Western University, Canada), 'Architectural and Curatorial Extensions of Extraction at the Museum'
Eike-Christian Heine (University of Stavanger, Norway), 'Exhibiting Energy Transitions in the Anthropocene: The Case of the Vienna Technical Museum'
Aislinn Pentecost-Farren (independent public historian, USA), 'Climate Crisis: The Inherent Exhibition'
This event series is organised by Dr Verity Burke as John Pollard Newman Fellow of Climate Change and the Arts at University College Dublin.
Image credit: : ‘WARPPEd Exhibition’. Paolo Viscardi, National Museum of Ireland: Natural History.
