ASU-LACMA Navigating Change in Museums lecture series | Sustainability in Artistic Programs and Operations at Swiss Institute with Stefanie Hessler

with Stefanie Hessler

Oct. 29 | 1–2 p.m. MST | Zoom

In this talk, Stefanie Hessler will discuss Swiss Institute’s ongoing efforts to integrate environmental consciousness into both its artistic programming and everyday operations. Since 2022, SI has undertaken a comprehensive process of examining its carbon emissions, energy use, travel, transportation, waste, materials and other aspects of institutional practice, with the goal of moving beyond isolated “green” initiatives toward a broader transformation of how an arts organization operates. Hessler will reflect on how this process has informed SI’s curatorial thinking, including “Spora,” an open-ended initiative that invited artists to intervene in the institution’s architecture, infrastructures and working processes, and “Energies,” an East Village-wide exhibition that addressed ecological affordances and effects, social formations and political arrangements attached to energy past and present. Rather than treating sustainability as a fixed set of solutions, SI approaches climate action as a collaborative process of learning, experimentation and institutional change. This includes rethinking exhibition materials and production, transportation and shipping, travel, reuse, partnerships and relationships with local communities. Drawing on SI’s experiences, Hessler will consider how museums and arts organizations might redefine institutional success, collaboration, growth and progress in an era of ecological urgency. 

Speaker Biography

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, editor and the Director of Swiss Institute (SI) in New York. At SI, Hessler has curated and co-curated solo exhibitions by Saodat Ismailova, Ali Cherri, Lap-See Lam and Raven Chacon, as well as initiated the curatorial project “Spora,” which invites artists to transform the institution through what she calls “environmental institutional critique.” Previously, as the Director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, Hessler co-led the exhibition “Sex Ecologies” and edited the accompanying compendium on queer ecologies, sexuality and care in more-than-human worlds (with Seed Box and The MIT Press, 2021). Selected projects as an independent curator include the 17th MOMENTA Biennale, “Sensing Nature,” Montreal; “Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II,” Ocean Space, Venice; and the symposium “Practices of Attention,” 33rd Bienal de São Paulo. Hessler is the author of Prospecting Ocean (The MIT Press, 2019) and has edited over a dozen volumes.