Episode 7: What happens after: Art as Targets of Climate Action with the Leopold Museum
On November 15th, 2022, protestors from Last Generation targeted Klimt’s painting Death and Life as part of their performative activism, exclaiming:
“We have known the problem for 50 years. We must finally act. The planet is becoming ruined…Agriculture will no longer work…or do we continue to destroy our world with fossil fuels. Death or Life, that is the decision we have to make now.” (Youtube-generated captions translated to English.)
Roxy talks with Carina Korab and Sandra Dzialek from the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria about their emergency preparedness and response to the activism in the gallery. While not every museum will face the sticky situation of the 'ominous black sludge', it is likely that many will face the very real threat of environmental disasters upon collections in the coming years. Carina and Sandra explain navigating the media's response to the event and how being prepared as a group made handling the disaster more manageable than expected.
Resources:
The Leopold Museums‘ educational program about the effect of climate change:
A Few Degrees More – Leopold Museum ViennaAustrian Registrar Committee Website, a network for registrars, exhibition managers and collections mangers in Austria.
Austrian Museums Association and the proposal for a unified climate corridor in Austria for exhibitions, it is based on the climate corridor proposal by the German Museum Association.