conscient podcast

e84 viviane gosselin + mauro vescera of the museum of vancouver

Episode Summary

My conversation with Viviane Gosselin, Director of Collections & Exhibitions, Curator of Contemporary Culture and Mauro Vescera, Chief Executive Officer of the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) about greening their operations and addressing the climate emergency and issues of climate justice through their exhibitions.

Episode Notes

Museums have been very good at normalizing social values and so when you have this shift and the government is seeing it, we have to change behavior, the museum can create that space where people can rethink some of their conventional thinking about consuming, for example and there's all kinds of ways, like we were saying earlier, of integrating this kind of knowledge, not in a lecturing way. I think that's the key word, is we can be cheeky. This is a social activity. Nobody is forcing anyone to come to the museum and so when people come, they want to be intrigued, surprised and they love it. If you look at exit surveys, they love to come out thinking it's like: I had no idea that I can make this kind of change and have this kind of impact.

Viviane Gosselin, Director of Collections & Exhibitions, Museum of Vancouver, November 2021

I worked with Mauro in 2006 on the Art in Ecology – A Think Tank on Arts and Sustainability and was happy to reconnect and learn about his leadership of this institution. I met Viviane through SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, notably on the Education working group and was impressed by her passion for the environment and institutional engagement on the climate emergency.

This conversation was recorded in 3 spaces: office, collections and exhibitions. I learned about the MOV’s 4 engagement priorities (redress and decolonization, immigration and diversity, environment and sustainability and urban and contemporary issues) and how they are greening their operations and addressing climate change and climate justice through their exhibitions.

Viviane also spoke about her work with the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice.

Mauro and Viviane in the MOV collection, November 15, 2021

Exhibition at MOV, November 15, 2021

Entrance of MOV, November 15, 2021