A Museum for Future Fossils: On Curating Ecological Crisis in the Vernacular Museum

Abstract

Can a curatorial model based on radical pedagogy encourage action on climate change? To answer this question, this article critically reflects on A Museum for Future Fossils, an emergent and itinerant Malrauxian ‘museum without walls’ initiated by the authors in 2018, which is dedicated to thinking curatorially about the Anthropocene and the climate emergency. This ongoing vernacular museum includes undergraduate classes, art exhibitions, workshops, talks and a graduate summer school. By examining the potentials of land-based curatorial pedagogy through speculative museum text, we introduce a methodology of non-extractive exhibition-making.