In 2015 the United Nations drafted the document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, identifying seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on these goals, on Friday 31 March 2023 from 10:00 am, AMACI – the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums – hosted Contemporary Art Museums and Sustainable Development: a necessary practice, an online study day curated by Marcella Beccaria, Vice‑President of AMACI and Deputy Director, Chief Curator and Curator of the Collections at the Castello di Rivoli – Museum of Contemporary Art. The event was dedicated to the role of museums and cultural institutions in achieving a more sustainable global development.
The day was led by Henry McGhie, author of numerous publications and founder of the museum‑consultancy firm Curating Tomorrow, which works to enable museums and cultural bodies to contribute effectively to sustainable‑development programmes. The themes addressed – People, Planet, Prosperity, Partnership and Peace – were drawn directly from the UN Agenda.
“Contemporary art museums,” says Henry McGhie, “are well‑placed to support this effort, to critique the past and to combine creative activity and imagination with a concern for our shared future. To do so, museums and their staff need to be empowered, and that is what I hope we can achieve together on this study day.”
Together with McGhie, leading professionals and representatives from the AMACI network presented current museum‑practice examples aimed at sustainable development.
The programme opened on Friday 31 March 2023 with institutional greetings from Lorenzo Balbi, President of AMACI and Director of MAMbo; Fabio De Chirico, Head of Service II – Contemporary Art and Service V – Photography at the Directorate‑General for Contemporary Creativity, Ministry of Culture; and Marcella Beccaria, Vice‑President of AMACI. This was followed by five sessions devoted to specific topics, offering a direct dialogue between institutions, cultural‑sector operators and the public.
Henry McGhie founded Curating Tomorrow to help museums and their partners improve their contribution to sustainable‑development agendas, including the SDGs, biodiversity conservation, climate action, human rights and disaster‑risk reduction. He has produced a series of open‑access guides on these subjects, among them Museums and the Sustainable Development Goals (2019). With a lifelong passion for nature, he has spent three decades working in and with museums, seeking to use them “to the fullest”. He has helped forge partnerships among researchers, museums and policy‑makers and has worked to embed museums in United Nations agendas and events. He is a member of the Sustainability Working Group established by ICOM in 2018 and, within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a member of the Commission on Education and Communication (CEC). He contributed to recognising museums as key sites for climate‑change education and action in the 2021 work programme for the Paris Agreement. He is keen to collaborate with museums, museum networks and their partners who wish to embrace sustainable development as a guiding principle for societal contribution.
On the occasion of the online study day, AMACI has made a digital library available to everyone. The collection is not exhaustive; it gathers biographies of the speakers, free online resources cited during the day and detailed material on AMACI museum projects. The Association continues its commitment to supporting museum policies linked to contemporary practice, and to informing and raising awareness about issues deemed urgent.
