Creating a Climate for Change: Lucy I. Zimmerman on Climate Changing

MARY ABOWD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

“The business-as-usual of museums is being upended during the pandemic… there’s an agitation and a desire for change that’s being pushed like never before.”

—LUCY ZIMMERMAN What is the role of museums and whom do they serve? What roles do artists play within museums, communities, and cultures? Such questions are at the heart of Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment, now on view through August 15 at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Originally scheduled to open last spring, the show features a diverse group of some 20 artists whose work engages systemic injustice—from mass incarceration and global warming to racism and colonization—all during a catastrophic year of global pandemic. Infused throughout Climate Changing are questions about access, disability, and what it means to create shared space. Below, Associate Curator of Exhibitions Lucy Zimmerman talks about how she organized the show—and why the questions that originally inspired it are all the more pressing now.

ABOVE Chris Burden, Exposing the Foundation of the Museum, 1986. Marker on black-and-white photograph, 11 x 14 in. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; gift of Leonard Nimoy and Susan Bay-Nimoy, 2004.77. © Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.