The Art Angle Podcast: Is the Art World Causing a Climate Catastrophe?

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that
delves into the places where the art world meets the real world,
bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew
Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in
museums, the art market, and much more with input from our own
writers and editors as well as artists, curators, and other top
experts in the field.

For our latest episode, team Art Angle traveled to Art Basel
Miami Beach to examine a much thornier and more urgent issue than
the glamorous trade show’s business: the art world’s impact on
Mother Earth. From thousands of deep-pocketed collectors flying in
to south Florida for the week’s festivities, to the hundreds of
black cars and Ubers ferrying attendees from event to event, to the
(literal) tons of artworks shipped by air, land, and sea to Miami’s
convention centers for a scant five days of exposure, the
ecologically punishing realities of the art fair demand that we
take a hard look at their sustainability for the planet—and ask
bigger questions about the art world’s responsibility to address
the climate crisis.

The need for action only intensifies in light of the fact that
Art Basel Miami Beach is just one of nearly 300 art fairs held
around the globe every year, and that many of these events take
place in the coastal destinations most imperiled by climate change.
Art Basel Miami Beach is held just a few blocks from the waterfront
where the sea level has tripled over the past decade, causing the
city to ship in imported sand to keep its coastline from
disappearing entirely. And this is just a prelude of things to come
in other crucial art hubs like Hong Kong, London, New York, and Los
Angeles.

Given the art world’s cherished progressive reputation, how long
can it justify the extraordinarily outsize habits of its fairs,
institutions, and jet-setting elites? In what ways could the
various players in the global art market minimize the damage they
do to Mother Nature? And how are artists, as well as
climate-activist groups like Extinction Rebellion, foregrounding
the need for change in the cultural sphere? In the middle of Miami
Art Week, Artnet News’s European editor Kate Brown joined Andrew
Goldstein by phone from Germany to tackle these urgent questions,
and more.

Listen below and subscribe to The Art
Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or
catch up on past
episodes here on Artnet News.)

Listen to Other Episodes:

The Art Angle Podcast: Art
Basel Rules the Art Market. Is That a Good Thing for Art?

The Art Angle
Podcast: How Yayoi Kusama Became an Unlikely Pop-Culture
Phenomenon

The Art Angle Podcast: Who
Is Sotheby’s Mysterious New Owner, and What Does He Want?

The Art Angle Podcast: Hans
Neuendorf on 30 Years of Artnet, and What Comes Next

The Art Angle Podcast:
Anish Kapoor on ‘Radical’ Art, China, and the Magic Paint
Wars

The Art Angle Podcast: Why
Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre Matters

Introducing the Art Angle
Podcast: How MoMA Remade Itself for the Trump Era

The post The Art Angle Podcast: Is the Art World Causing a
Climate Catastrophe? appeared first on artnet News.